$400 million paid to Iran was nothing but ransom: Trump campaign
August 19, 2016 09:16
The $400 million that the US had paid to Iran to settle an outstanding financial dispute was used as a "leverage" for release of American prisoners, the State Department has said even as top Republican party leadership and its presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign claimed it was nothing but a "ransom payment"
The top GOP leadership and the Trump Campaign was quick to make a political capital out of it by claiming that this was nothing but ransom payment, which has finally been acknowledged by the Obama Administration.
"The payment of the $400 million was not done until after the prisoners were released. I'm not disputing that," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said yesterday when asked about a Wall Street Journal report on this.
"We deliberately leveraged that moment to finalize these outstanding issues nearly simultaneously. It's already publicly known that we returned to Iran its $400 million in that same time period as part of The Hague settlement agreement," he said.
"With concerns that Iran may renege on the prisoner release given unnecessary delays regarding persons in Iran who could not be located as well as, to be quite honest, mutual mistrust between Iran and the United States, we, of course, sought to retain maximum leverage until after American citizens were released. That was our top priority," Kirby said.
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