White House: $400M Iran payment wasn’t ransom

The White House on Monday acknowledged that $400 million in cash sent to Iran early this year was related to the release of three American prisoners, but denied it amounted to “ransom” or even “leverage.”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest also said top officials advising President Obama on national security matters had stood by the decision to carry out the exchange, which has been roundly criticized by Republicans. 

{mosads}“The president of course discussed these arrangements with members of his national security team and there was unanimous agreement among his national security team that he should move forward,” Earnest said.

The State Department said last week that the money sent to Iran in January was linked to the release of three American prisoners after a Wall Street Journal report said U.S. officials held control of the money until the prisoners left Iran. 

“It would have been foolish and imprudent, in our view, to go ahead and settle the cash payment of the principal when we didn’t have our Americans back,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told MNSBC last week.

“We did use it as leverage, and we make no apologies about that because we got our American citizens back safely,” Kirby said. 

However, the White House spokesman declined to similarly call the cash payment “leverage,” with Earnest stating, “That is not a word that I have used.

“What works is that Iran released four American citizens who were being unjustly detained in exchanged for seven individuals being released in the United States. That was the exchange,” he said. 

The White House spokesman explained that U.S. officials were engaged in three separate diplomatic tracks around the time of the exchange in January. The State Department acknowledged last week that the efforts merged during the release of the Americans in Iran.

“All of this was accomplished without a single shot being fired, all of this was accomplished without U.S. troops being deployed and it’s an indication of how effective the president’s tough, diplomatic strategy has proved to be,” Earnest said. 

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has seized on the issue to criticize Obama and attack Hillary Clinton, his Democratic presidential rival who served as secretary of State during the Obama administration’s negotiations for a nuclear agreement with Iran.

Earnest on Monday repeatedly went after “right-wingers” in the U.S. and Iran, claiming criticism of the exchange was in part motivated by those seeking to torpedo the deal. He also defended the administration’s openness about the exchange, new details of which were reported on early this month.

“[T]he president and his administration have been misleading us since January about whether he ransomed the freedom of the Americans unjustly imprisoned in Iran,” Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement late last week.

“We’ve been quite direct since January when the president announced this deal … exactly what the benefits would be for the United States,” Earnest insisted, pushing back when pressed by reporters several times in somewhat testy exchanges where he defended the administration’s story as consistent.

Earnest insisted the exchange didn’t amount to “ransom,” saying repeatedly it was instead a “mutual prisoner release.”

Republicans have repeatedly attacked the payment. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a vulnerable GOP incumbent running for reelection, has vowed to hold a hearing on the issue next month. 

Kirk was quoted in a State Journal Register editorial board interview saying Obama was “acting like the drug deal in chief … giving clean packs of money” to Iran.

The money was part of a $1.7 billion payment in cash to Iran as part of an agreement resolving a failed arms deal from the 1970s.