If it wasn’t a ransom payment, why did Obama keep it secret?

[Vigilante]

I just LOVE the way the subversives DENY this, as the hostages were released hours AFTER they got $400 MILLION! When is there going to be some accountability for the Manchurian muslim?

NY Post ^ | August 4, 2016 | Jonah Goldberg
One of my all-time favorite lines is from Henry Thoreau: “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” It came to mind this week when the White House and State Department insisted that the charge the U.S. paid a ransom to get back American hostages was purely circumstantial. Sometimes, a $400 million pay-off in laundered money, delivered in the dead of night in an unmarked cargo plane isn’t what it looks like. January 16 was “Implementation Day” for the nuclear deal between the United States and Iran, in which the state sponsor of...

 

[Vigilante]

• PROOF OBAMA LIED=> US Iranian Hostage Abedini Says Iran Held Plane on Tarmac Until Ransom...
  TheGatewayPundit ^ | 4 August 2016 | Jim Hoft
  On January 17, 2016, a cargo plane with $400 million in foreign currencies was secretly sent to Iran. This was the same day the Iranian regime released four American hostages held in Tehran. They waited on the tarmac for hours. “ Saeed Abidini: I just remember the night at the airport sitting for hours and hours there and I asked police— why you not letting us go — And he told me we are waiting for another plane and if that plane take off we gonna let you go. Trish Regan: You slept there at the airport? Abidini: Yes, for...

 

[Laughing-gas]

Just keep to slow lane, shortbus.

 

[Yarddog]

Not only did they keep it secret, but they got cred for the hostage release being good will from the Iranians over
the nuclear deal. It also shows how weak that deal actually was, if we still had to pay that in cash.
To be sure, the media will just bury this.

 

[Vigilante]

Just keep to slow lane, short bus.

Better get out from under it, unless you like tread marks on your face!

 

[S.J.]

Corruption at a level never seen before in the United States. Look what we've allowed ourselves to become for the sake of electing the first black president. NOW is when Michelle should be ashamed of her country.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Trump, believe it or not, has now admitted the plane he was ranting about was not a plane full of money.

 

[waltky]

This just keeps gettin' curiouser an' curiouser...

Iran May Have Received as Much as $33.6 Billion in Cash, Gold Payments From U.S.
September 8, 2016 - New questions emerge on several billions paid out to Iran by Obama admin

Iran may have received an additional $33.6 billion in secret cash and gold payments facilitated by the Obama administration between 2014 and 2016, according to testimony provided before Congress by an expert on last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran. Between January 2014 and July 2015, when the Obama administration was hammering out the final details of the nuclear accord, Iran was paid $700 million every month from funds that had previously been frozen by U.S. sanctions. A total of $11.9 billion was ultimately paid to Iran, but the details surrounding these payments remain shrouded in mystery, according to Mark Dubowitz, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In total, “Iran may have received as much as $33.6 billion in cash or in gold and other precious metals,” Dubowitz disclosed. New questions about these payments are emerging following confirmation from top Obama administration officials on Thursday that it was forced to pay Iran $1.7 billion in cash prior to the release of several U.S. hostages earlier this year. The administration insisted that cash had to be used for this payment.

Top administration officials were adamant that the cash payments were the best way to ensure that Iran got immediate access to this money due to its ongoing difficulty accessing international funds still sanctioned by the West. Lawmakers and others are now pressing the administration to disclose how a slew of other payments to Iran were made in the years leading up to the final nuclear accord. “In July, the Associated Press cited U.S. officials who estimated that Iran ‘brought home less than $20 billion.’ Were these funds repatriated to Tehran in cash or in gold and precious metals? Through the formal financial system? Or through some combination?” Dubowitz asked in his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. “The administration should also clarify if the $20 billion dollars is inclusive of the $11.9 billion in [Joint Plan of Action] funds, or if the $20 billion was in addition to the $11.9 billion,” he said. “Either way, it is important to understand how funds were sent. The worst-case scenario here is that Iran may have received as much as $33.6 billion in cash or in gold and other precious metals.” At least some of this money was likely sent in cash and other assets, according to Dubowitz. The Obama administration was forced to disclose on Thursday that current sanctions and banking restrictions prohibited it from transferring funds to Iran via electronic methods.

The cash payment of $1.7 billion earlier this year was the easiest way to ensure Iran got immediate access to the money, according to these officials. “Iran had to have it in cash,” Paul Ahern, assistant general counsel for enforcement and intelligence at the Treasury Department, told lawmakers. “Iran was very aware of the difficulties it would face in accessing and using the funds if they were in any other form than cash, even after the lifting of sanctions.” A cash delivery “was the most reliable way that they received the funds in a timely manner and it was the manner preferred by the relative foreign banks,” Ahren said. Given the situation, it is likely that the multiple past payments to Iran were conducted in a similar fashion, according to Dubowitz. “If the White House could only send cash to Iran from the start of the JPOA period through the Tribunal payment that could amount to a grant total of 33.6 billion,” he said. “Did any of this money go through the formal financial system? If so, the administration is not being truthful about the 1.7 billion. If many billions arrived in Iran on pallets [of cash] this would be a pretty astounding revelation.”

Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and expert on rogue regimes, said that cash payments of this nature are “highly irregular.” “There’s no reason it needed to be paid now. After all, successive administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have delayed payments so as to avoid funding Iranian terrorism,” Rubin said. “Likewise, if the United States freezes accounts linked to al Qaeda or Hamas, releasing it and saying, ‘It’s their money anyway,’ would not be a tenable explanation. Cash payments are highly irregular.” The Iranians have been clear that they “perceived the payment to be a ransom” despite the administration’s protestations, Rubin explained. “Not only has the delivery of the millions of dollars been perceived as a ransom, provided as an incentive to seize more hostages …. but because the money was delivered in cash the payment bolstered the strength of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and augmented its ability to finance and conduct terrorism,” he said.

Iran May Have Received as Much as $33.6 Billion in Cash, Gold Payments From U.S.

 

[RoshawnMarkwees]

Because it was a ransom payment and Obama is a crook.

 

[TooTall]

Trump, believe it or not, has now admitted the plane he was ranting about was not a plane full of money.

The fact that Trump saw the wrong plane doesn't mean the plane full of money wasn't there.

 

[waltky]

About the release of U.S.-held Iranian assets...

$400 million in cash was flown to Iran back in January. Was that wrong?
August 5,`16 - Some thoughts about the details that emerged this week about the release of U.S.-held Iranian assets from January.

The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has been too busy luxuriating in cargo shorts and observing Donald Trump’s cratering polls to focus on international relations. It therefore took me a few days to read the Wall Street Journal story about how the United States sent $400 million in foreign cash to Iran at exactly the same time Iran released American prisoners:

* Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

* The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

* The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.

A follow-up WSJ story noted that Justice Department officials had qualms about the exchange because the timing of it made it seem like a quid quo pro. This got a lot of conservatives exercised about how VERY DAMNING FACTS just got revealed and it’s a scandal and it shows the United States paying Iran ransom for U.S. hostages.

The thing is, though, almost all of this information was reported back in January when the asset exchange was made (including the $400 million figure). Both Vox’s Zack Beauchamp and the New York Times’ Michael Shear and David Sanger offer explainers about the transaction. To sum them up:

* Remember, the money that was transferred was always Iran’s money. It’s just that the United States seized Iran’a assets when Iran seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979. Always remember — this is Iran’s money being given back to Iran;
* By all accounts the United States was going to lose an international legal tribunal ruling on the dispute. The payment prevented having to pay an even bigger penalty (in terms of interest on the $400 million held over 35 years).
* The transfer was not kept secret, but announced in January when the exchange took place. The new information in the WSJ stories are that (a) the transfer was in pallets of cash and (b) DOJ officials were queasy about the optics.

President Obama certainly didn’t think of it as ransom:

 

[MarathonMike]

That's what I've been saying. They made one drop of allegedly $400 million in various currencies but how does anyone know how much it was? It could have been $4 billion that's the problem with cash. And if they did it once you can bet they've done it before. I guess Obama learned some cool tricks from the Mexican gun running days with his sidekick Holder.

 

[hazlnut]

It's not nice to make fun of retarded children.

 

[Care4all]

they didn't pay ransom and then got the prisoners released....

they got the release...

then they gave the Iranians their money back.

 

[Manonthestreet]