Dubious Fox News article appears to have sparked Trump attack on Obama
- Thread starter Guno צְבִי
- Start date
Did Obama give citizenship to 2,500 Iranians to sweeten the ayatollahs?
August 3, 2016 - The Obama administration quietly shipped $400 million stacked on wooden pallets in an unmarked plane to Iran in January — just as Tehran was releasing four Americans who had been detained there.
The huge cash load represented the first payment of a $1.7 billion debt that Iran, at an international tribunal in The Hague, claimed it was owed over a failed 1979 arms deal signed before the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
The Obama administration was accused of making the cash-for-hostages deal by timing the payout to the release. US officials did admit that Iran wanted the cash in exchange for the Americans.
When President Obama talked about the release on Jan. 17, he said, “With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well.”
But he never mentioned the $400 million *simultaneous payment.
The US has long had a policy against paying ransom for hostages. In 2015, though, the Obama administration relaxed that policy after the seizures of Americans by ISIS, saying it would not prosecute captives’ relatives who wished to pay ransoms on their own. The government, in fact, said it would even help families communicate with militants.
https://nypost.com/2016/08/03/us-sent-400m-to-iran-as-us-detainees-were-freed-report/
The huge cash load represented the first payment of a $1.7 billion debt that Iran, at an international tribunal in The Hague, claimed it was owed over a failed 1979 arms deal signed before the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
The Obama administration was accused of making the cash-for-hostages deal by timing the payout to the release. US officials did admit that Iran wanted the cash in exchange for the Americans.
When President Obama talked about the release on Jan. 17, he said, “With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well.”
But he never mentioned the $400 million *simultaneous payment.
The US has long had a policy against paying ransom for hostages. In 2015, though, the Obama administration relaxed that policy after the seizures of Americans by ISIS, saying it would not prosecute captives’ relatives who wished to pay ransoms on their own. The government, in fact, said it would even help families communicate with militants.
https://nypost.com/2016/08/03/us-sent-400m-to-iran-as-us-detainees-were-freed-report/
The Obama administration granted citizenship to approximately 2,500 Iranians -including family members of politicians and other VIPS- in the run-up to the Iranian nuclear agreement, said a senior cleric inside the Islamic Republic.
https://www.hannity.com/media-room/iranian-official-obama-granted-citizenship-to-2500-iranians-ahead-of-nuclear-deal/
https://www.hannity.com/media-room/iranian-official-obama-granted-citizenship-to-2500-iranians-ahead-of-nuclear-deal/
Cancel 2018.2
Oh, hi
Are you and loetheloser lovers?
Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zolnour, a senior cleric who is chairman of Iran’s parliamentary nuclear committee and a member of its national security and foreign affairs committee, alleges that the Obama administration granted U.S. citizenship to 2,500 Iranians — including family members of Iranian government officials — as part of the 2015 negotiations of the Iran nuclear deal, Fox News reported Monday.
Zolnour claimed the granting of citizenship was done as a favor to senior Iranian officials with close ties to President Hassan Rouhani.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/obama-didnt-just-pay-iran-he-granted-2500-iranians-citizenship-as-part-of-deal/
Zolnour claimed the granting of citizenship was done as a favor to senior Iranian officials with close ties to President Hassan Rouhani.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/obama-didnt-just-pay-iran-he-granted-2500-iranians-citizenship-as-part-of-deal/
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
do you know of any other times the US has paid another government in small unmarked bills in the middle of the night?......
Loving91390
Verified User
Plus interest you and I had to pay .....
It was not the Mullahs money. It was money being held legitimately as a result of sanctions. It was not giving them back "their money". It was legally to be used as reparations to families who had been harmed by the Mullahs. But I digress- everyone involved in the transaction knew it was a ransom.
President Obama Violated the Law with His Ransom Payment to Iran
NATIONAL SECURITY & DEFENSE
President Obama Violated the Law with His Ransom Payment to Iran
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
August 6, 2016 8:00 AM
(Larry Downing/Reuters)
The president hoped to camouflage what he knew to be against the law in his dealings with Iran.
Did it ever occur to President Obama to ask why he couldn’t just cut a check to the Iranian regime?
Outrage broke out this week over the revelation that Obama arranged to ship the mullahs piles of cash, worth $400 million and converted into foreign denominations, reportedly in an unmarked cargo plane. The hotly debated question was whether the payment, which the administration attributes to a 37-year-old arms deal, was actually a ransom paid for the release of American hostages Tehran had abducted It is a waste of time to debate that point further. The Iranians have bragged that the astonishing cash payment was a ransom — and Obama has been telling us for months that we can trust the Iranians. The hostages were released the same day the cash arrived. One of the hostages has reported that the captives were detained an extra several hours at the airport and told they would not be allowed to leave until the arrival of another plane — inferentially, the unmarked cargo plane ferrying the cash. The reason American policy has always prohibited paying ransoms to terrorists and other abductors is that it only encourages them to take more hostages. And, as night follows day, Iran has abducted more Americans since Obama paid the cash. No matter how energetically the president tries to lawyer the ransom issue, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck . . .
More worth examining is why the transaction took the bizarre form that it did. To cut to the chase, I believe it was to camouflage — unsuccessfully — the commission of felony law violations.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Justice Department strongly objected to the cash payment to Iran. As we shall see, that should come as no surprise. What is surprising is the Journal’s explanation of Justice’s concerns: Department officials, it is said, fretted that the transaction looked like a ransom payment. I don’t buy that. It is not a federal crime to pay a ransom; just to receive one. Our government’s stated disapproval of paying ransoms is a prudent policy, not a legal requirement. The Justice Department’s principal job is to enforce the laws, not to ensure good policy in foreign relations. It seems far more likely that Justice was worried that the transaction was illegal.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.na...sident-obama-broke-law-sending-cash-iran/amp/
And kept it a secret for months?
So you say, old man. You appear to think DEMOCRAT denials of paying a ransom as conclusive, don't you?