Ransom for Hostages- Iranian Regime Got a Pallet of $400 Million Cash

On Tuesday it leaked that a secret $400 million ransom was delivered in an unmarked plane to the Iranian Regine in January. Allegedly, the payment was given in exchange of the release of four Americans.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

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. 

Former US prosecutor and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani stated that the payment to Iran should be investigated by the Justice Department. “I call that illegal dealings with Iran . . . if I had someone who put $400 million dollars in a trunk and went over to Europe and converted it into European money, you don’t think I wouldn’t put that person in jail for money laundering?” said Giuliani on Fox Business News.

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.”

Obama officials have consistently denied that the payment was a ransom, citing that the exchange timing was coincidental and that the secret funds were “to resolve a dispute over a pre-1979 arms deal with the Shah’s government,” according to the National Review.

On Fox News, State Department Spokesperson, James Kirby lied and stated that the Obama administration had already talked about the payment. “The only thing new in this article that I’ve seen in the Wall Street Journal is some color hear about some payment schedule itself… We saved the American taxpayers billions of dollars… This compromise was actually done to the taxpayer’s benefit…” said Kirby on Fox News.

Then when asked why the Iranian press reported that it was indeed a ransom payment, Kirby responded with “It’s absolutely wrong, completely wrong. Look, you can believe us who talked about this on camera and on the record since January or you can believe an unnamed anonymous defense official from Iran.” 

There has been speculation that the Obama administration purposely tried to avoid letting Congress know about the ransom negotiations.  

“Given the negotiating record of the nuclear talks, it is impossible to believe there was no link between the Iran deal and the release of the American prisoners. More likely, the Obama administration desperately wanted Iran to release the Americans as part of the nuclear agreement but Tehran refused until sanctions were lifted and it received a large ransom payment,” writes the National Review.

Apparently this isn’t the first time Obama has paid a ransom to Iran. $500,000 was paid to free each American hiker capture by Iran in 2011 when it was under the government of Oman.  

Our not-so-friendly ally, Iran set a steep price for these four Americans. In the most recent annual report by the State Department, Iran was determined the top state sponsor of terrorism. So where do you think Iran plans to spend that $400 million in cash in support of? We are sure taxpayers are thrilled their money is being given to terrorists.

“The president was quite forward-leaning in advance of the nuclear deal even being completed in acknowledging that we know that Iran supports terrorism,” said Josh Earnest, White House spokesman in a press briefing this week. “We know that Iran supports Hezbollah and the Assad regime, and it is certainly possible that some of the money that Iran has is being used for those purposes, too.” 

He then said sadly that the deal won’t be investigated because “we have, as Donald Trump says, a crooked rigged system. Hillary [Clinton] was not indicted and she directly violated federal law.”