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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-reportedly-airlifted-400-million-135210579.html
Washington secretly airlifted $400 million to Tehran amid a prisoner swap in January in which seven Iranians detained in the US were exchanged for Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and three other Iranian-American prisoners, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Administration officials denied that the $400 million cash transfer was tantamount to critics' assertion of a ransom payment, insisting that the funds were part of a $1.7 billion financial settlement the US had reached with Iran as part of the nuclear deal.
"As we've made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim … were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home," State Department spokesman John Kirby told The Journal.
"Not only were the two negotiations separate — they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of the Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years," he added.
But the fact that President Barack Obama failed to disclose the transfer of foreign hard currency to Iran via an unmarked cargo plane has once again raised questions about the administration's transparency in its dealings with Iran.
"We were right in January 2016 to describe the administration's $1.7 billion transfer to Iran as a ransom payment," US Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, said in a statement on Wednesday
Washington secretly airlifted $400 million to Tehran amid a prisoner swap in January in which seven Iranians detained in the US were exchanged for Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and three other Iranian-American prisoners, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Administration officials denied that the $400 million cash transfer was tantamount to critics' assertion of a ransom payment, insisting that the funds were part of a $1.7 billion financial settlement the US had reached with Iran as part of the nuclear deal.
"As we've made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim … were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home," State Department spokesman John Kirby told The Journal.
"Not only were the two negotiations separate — they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of the Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years," he added.
But the fact that President Barack Obama failed to disclose the transfer of foreign hard currency to Iran via an unmarked cargo plane has once again raised questions about the administration's transparency in its dealings with Iran.
"We were right in January 2016 to describe the administration's $1.7 billion transfer to Iran as a ransom payment," US Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, said in a statement on Wednesday
