Aug. 19, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
20:55
3384 Did Obama Pay $400 Million In Ransom to Iran? | True News
The Wall Street Journal reported that the mysterious $400 million payment to Iran was quid pro quo for the release of American hostages - which was fiercely denied by Barack Obama and the White House. “We do not pay ransom. We didn’t here, and we won’t in the future.” - President Barack ObamaOn Thursday, State Department Spokesman John Kirby confirmed that the $400 million payment was held until the prisoners were released by Iran - which flew in the face of Obama's previous "it was just a coincidence" denials. Did the United States pay Iran ransom for the release of US prisoners - or was it simply leverage? Is there even a difference? Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
This is a confusing, messy story, but there's some very powerful information in it.
I'm going to do my best to make some sense of it.
Please, if I get anything wrong or my confusion is unwarranted, let me know in the comments below, but I will take a good old honest So, January 2016, four Americans get onto a plane in Tehran, in Iran.
Last January, to be sent back, to be released by the government of Iran, to be sent back to the United States.
Now, the White House has maintained it's purely coincidental that on exactly the same day, an unmarked airplane with pallets stacked with 400 million dollars...
Worth of euros and Swiss francs and other European currency and, I don't know, pop bottles and Chuck E. Cheese coupons and perhaps even some aluminum bottle tops or can tops.
I don't even know.
But that same day, this $400 million was delivered to Iranian authorities the exact same day that these Americans were released.
Now, the cash delivery was part of a $1.7 billion settlement of claims we'll get to in a second that were out of the 1970s-era dispute between Iran and the United States.
Just a coincidence that after many decades of negotiations, they just happened to land on the same day.
Nothing to be suspicious about.
Move along, move along.
Now, in early August of this year, the Wall Street Journal had a pretty damn good scoop.
The same time Iran released these four hostages, the exact same day the US arranged delivery of this money to Iran.
Now, The nature of this transfer, right?
The US had to work pretty hard to get the money in Swiss francs, other currencies, EUs, and they had to stack it and I guess wrap it in plastic like they were just sending dollars to Iraq.
They had to stack it on these wooden pallets.
They had to throw it on an unmarked cargo plane and fly it to Iran.
And so the Wall Street Journal said, gosh, I wonder if it could be conceived of as some sort of secret ransom payment.
And the Wall Street Journal, you know, did a lot of research.
They interviewed with officials and other people.
And they said that it suggests at least that this was a quid pro quo.
Payment this $400 million for the release of the hostages.
That is a ransom, if that is the case.
And that is illegal under US law.
Now, this deal apparently was negotiated by the State Department.
It was approved by the White House, but it was opposed by the Justice Department.
My understanding is the Justice Department in the U.S. said, well, wait a second.
This isn't going to work.
Even if it's not a ransom, it sure as hell is going to look like a ransom.
And if it looks like a ransom, then everyone's going to have a dollar sign above them who's an American traveling overseas, particularly in those rather arid desert countries.
And so even if we say somehow that it's not a ransom, if the perception is general enough that it's perceived as a ransom, we've got a big, big problem.
Now, Obama, of course, has pushed strongly back against any suggestion of impropriety.
He said, hey, the payment was announced ahead of time.
Of course, it's not a hostage payment.
Timing was totally coincidental.
And, you know, it's just, you know, we got this long standing issue from the 1970s.
And now that this nuclear deal has been reached, we're just, you know, trying to tidy up some loose bookends.
What Obama said was, what we have is the manufacturing of outrage in a story we disclosed in January.
The only bit of news that is relevant on this is the fact that we paid cash.
That's what he said.
At a press conference August 4th, he went on to say, the reason that we have to give them cash is precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions and we do not have a banking relationship with Iran that we couldn't send them a check and we could not wire the money.
Now that explains precisely nothing.
Even if we say all of this is true, if you couldn't send them a check and you couldn't wire the money, why not do what US governments have done in the past and just set up stacks of US dollar bills on pallets which they shipped.
I don't know how much they shipped to Iraq, but it was a lot.
So why not just pay in US dollars?
Why not?
Why would you have to transfer all of this money to other funds?
So this really doesn't answer anything whatsoever.
Whether the payment is made in cash or not, according to a guy named Pompeo, a critic of the administration, he says it doesn't matter.
He says, quote, And that would include indirect transfer of assets.
And yet, the president admitted that there were American assets transferred to Iran.
See, Iran, since 1984, has been on one of the three countries on the State Department's list of sort of terrorist-sponsoring nations.
Now, the rest of the $1.7 billion doesn't seem to be particularly available, whether it's been paid, how it's been paid.
And so on.
So Pompeo went on to say, and so there's lots of questions, and the reasons those questions matter, certainly we don't want anyone breaking U.S. law, but they matter because we still have hostages held lots of places in the world, certainly in Iran, even subsequent to this ransom payment.
Now, the Iranian government, Everhelpful, specifically said and broadcast right all over their television network back in February that they said that the $400 million cash payment from the US to them was a ransom payment that they extorted the US for to secure the release of American hostages.
And what did Obama and the administration offer as two basic defenses?
Okay.
Let's go back to the origin of this.
Back in the late 1970s, there was a guy in charge, kind of a monarch and pretty heavily sponsored and supported by the United States, called the Shah.
Back in the late 70s, the Shah of Iran sent a whole bunch of money to the US to buy fighter jets.
Money had been received, but the jets hadn't been delivered to Iran.
Before the sale could be completed, radical revolutionaries overthrew the Shah.
They destroyed his government and they took his place.
And they also took some hostages, 60 or so hostages, which they took in November of 79 and kept for 444 days and released pretty much the same time that Ronald Reagan was giving his inaugural address.
So, The revolutionaries took over in Iran, and the United States was not about to send all these fighter jets to these new revolutionaries because they didn't seem to be a huge fan of the country that they regularly called the Great Satan, you know, burning the flags, death to America, and all that kind of stuff.
So, America had the money, but wasn't sending the weaponry which the money was supposed to purchase.
And...
This has dragged on for a lengthy amount of time.
Starting in the early 1980s, the new regime in Iran wanted its money back.
It said, you know, the money was sent to you and now we want the money back.
Kind of an odd thing for revolutionaries as a whole, you know.
It was February 11, 1979.
Guerrillas, rebel troops totally overwhelmed the troops.
Loyal to the Shah, there was arm street fighting, and it was, you know, a good old bloody revolution.
It was not an orderly transition of power.
It wasn't a democracy.
Nobody voted as far as that went.
And it just seems kind of odd that you overthrow a government, and you're a violent revolutionary, and then you want the deals of the government that you said was evil and you overthrew to be honored.
It just seems kind of odd, you know?
Like, if you overthrow the government...
I don't know that you get to keep all the negotiated stuff that the government did.
You know, maybe it was a kind of social contract that you felt wasn't really particularly worth keeping.
So...
So anyway, the Iranians said, we want our money back, and it got negotiated for decades at The Hague, and The Hague said, you owe...
I think the Iranians wanted like $10 billion, and I think they finally settled at $1.7 billion, and...
Apparently, America, because the Hague said it, now it's really interested in obeying international law regarding this money from the 1970s.
You know, the US is not always a strict adherent to international law.
You know, it invaded Iraq illegally in 2003.
No sanction from the UN, no imminent threat being posed by Iraq to either America or any of Iraq's And this was after years and years of bombing raids, assaults by special forces, and all of the drone-fired missile launches into, I don't know, countries like Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen.
Hundreds of innocent men, women, and children killed, and they...
U.S. captured and held without charge or trial.
Hundreds of people.
It just says are terrorists and illegal combatants and tortured thousands of captives.
And now apparently, you know, that's, you know, you just walk through that like Indiana Jones through a spider web.
But apparently if The Hague says you owe a country you've designated as a terrorist-supporting state a whole bunch of money because they overthrew the government you got the money from, apparently this is just ironclad.
You've got to pay up that.
So John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, tweeted that reports of a link between prisoner release and payment to Iran are completely false.
And he references a POTUS statement from January.
And then, just Thursday afternoon, the State Department said to the Associated Press, okay, the payment was in fact contingent on Iran freeing the POTUS. The prisoners.
So, contingent means that we gave them the money so that they would free the prisoners.
Now, the fact that the money had been deemed as owed by the US to Iran by The Hague and so on, it's the timing that matters.
We had to give the money in order to get the prisoners.
And in fact, there were interviews with the prisoners on the plane.
They got on the plane.
It was supposed to leave quickly.
They waited hour after hour after hour, and they said, what's the delay?
And apparently their guards said, or somebody in charge in Iran said, we're waiting for the money from the US so that we can let you go.
That's, you know, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I'm not sure it's not a duck.
So Kirby, this department spokesman, said, Oh no, the negotiations were separate, but the handoff may not have been and so on.
So reports of this link are completely false, he said.
Kind of hard to see that as on the extreme side of honesty.
So the State Department seems to have conceded that it was kind of like a ransom.
The exchange went like this.
A reporter asked...
This State Department spokesman, John Kirby, on Thursday, the reporter asked, quote, in basic English, you're saying you wouldn't give them $400 million in cash until the prisoners were released.
Correct?
You wouldn't give them the money until the prisoners were released.
Kirby said, that's correct.
That is very strange.
Um, An officer in the Revolutionary Guards and Commander of the Iranian paramilitary, General Mohammad Reza Nagdi, said after this trade, quote, taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies.
So it's the same day.
They say it was for the prisoners.
The Iranians say it was for the prisoners.
How is this not a ransom?
Convince me in the comments below.
I'm open to the argument, but I feel like I'm being interrogated by the Gestapo and ordered not to see a light in my eyeballs.
So this money was only part of the whole deal between America and Iran, apparently.
So President Obama pardoned three Iranians for breaking the trading sanctions between America and Iran.
And either reversed prison sentences or dropped charges directly for five others.
And Boeing, American company, is, as we speak, as you watch, as you listen, right now in Iran, negotiating for the sale of about $25 billion in aircraft, whose ultimate purpose seems to be a little bit on the military side.
So...
What's the fallout been?
Well, of course, the U.S. has had a long-standing tradition, if not order, to not negotiate with terrorists.
Because, of course, to not negotiate for the release of hostages or anything like that.
Because all you do is put a bounty on everyone else.
And what happened?
Well, not too long after they collected the $400 million of completely and totally non-ransom money, the government in Iran kidnapped and imprisoned More hostages!
Because that's apparently how you get the Benjamins.
Sorry, not Benjamins!
Euros and Swiss francs and so on.
So, U.S. citizens Siyamak Namazi, his father Bakar Namazi, and Reza Shahini and so on.
And so, yeah, that's why you don't pay the ransoms is because you just end up with more hostages.
And...
You know, at $100 million per hostage, it could be considered to be a thriving, if not particularly moral, business.
And one thing in history that it could be considered somewhat reminiscent of is back in the day, and you can look this up if you want, Ronald Reagan, this Iran-Contra deal.
But the difference is that Reagan basically said, yeah, my bad.
I made a mistake.
Reagan created an independent commission to investigate everything that happened with the Iran-Contra deal and how it happened and so on, as opposed to Obama, who is currently enjoying his vacation in Martha's vineyard.
So...
That's the general overview that seems to be floating around at the moment.
If you've got more clarifications, please let me know in the comments below or let us know somehow.
I have some questions popping to my mind.
If you overthrow a government, how do you get to keep its deals?
That just seems weird.
You know, like the Nazis promised old age pensions and when the Allies overthrew the Nazis, I don't think they felt hugely obligated to pay the Nazi pensions.
You know, it's like a bankruptcy.
If you overthrow the government, how do you get to keep their deals?
I'm curious.
If the US has had a law against transferring either directly or indirectly through dollars or Swiss francs or whatever, if the US can't transfer any assets to Iran, what the hell is the point of this multi-decade negotiation?
It makes no sense whatsoever.
Not at all.
It's impossible for me to pay you.
It's illegal for me to pay you.
I could go to jail.
I could be impeached for paying you.
So let's spend decades negotiating how I can pay you.
If it's legal to transfer these assets, why all the secrecy?
Why an unmarked plane?
Why did the Wall Street Journal have to ferret all of this stuff out?
Why not U.S. dollars?
You know, just call up the Fed.
Have them whip up a batch.
It's just a little bit of typing.
Why not U.S. dollars?
Maybe they've been talking to China.
So, is Obama going to continue to make the claim that...
His State Department is not going to negotiate with or pay any kind of ransom or provide any kind of positive consideration to terrorists.
I guess you could say that they used cash as an incentive or a leverage while negotiating with terrorists, but that just seems to me like a distinction without a difference.
And here's another thing.
So, there's been this big deal about Iran and nuclear weapons and nuclear power and all this kind of stuff.
And Obama has pushed this deal and signed this deal and it relies on a lot of trust.
You've really got to trust the Iranian government.
Thank you.
You know, Iranian, they get to continue their ballistic missile development, and Iran has been looking for nuclear weapons for years, much to the nervousness of, well, I guess particularly Israel.
Obama's big Iran deal, which is one of the things that drew Donald Trump into the race, they get a big bulletproof nuclear program that they can not too, without too much difficulty, they can weaponize that nuclear program pretty much at any time.
So, if the deal with Iran requires a lot of trust, then why do you need leverage when it's merely about releasing four prisoners?
Why?
Why would you need leverage?
Why would you need to say, well, you've got to let the prisoners go, then you get the $400 million, because I guess you could say, not of course for the four individuals concerned, but on a sort of larger global scale, I think it's fair to say that a nuclear-armed Iran Requires a little bit more trust than the release of four hostages.
And if the Obama administration doesn't trust the Iranian government enough to release four hostages without papering their runways with currency, then how on earth can they possibly trust Iran enough to, I don't know, self-inspect its own nuclear program and be totally honest about that?
So that just seems like a little bit of an inconsistency that could have, I don't know...
Radioactive repercussions.
So, you know, this is what, you know, Trump talked about.
He said these people don't know what they're doing.
Maybe that's the case.
Maybe they just don't know what they're doing.
Maybe they don't realize that using cash as a leverage to release prisoners is pretty much the same as a ransom, at least as far as I can see it.
Maybe they just don't understand that.
Maybe they can slice and dice this language to the point where they can just make anything, whatever they want.
Well, we're not going to use the word ransom.
Therefore, it's not a ransom.
So maybe it's incompetence.
Maybe it's just downright incompetence and foolishness.
Maybe there's a worse interpretation.
You know, it's hard to avoid the impression that Barack Obama and his administration seem really, really keen on giving enormous amounts of money, in cash sometimes, to a nation that their State Department defines as a sponsor of terrorism.
I mean, terrorists love cold, hard cash, so why would they want to give so much money to a nation that their State Department has got as one of three nations that sponsors terrorism?
Why?
I don't know.
Maybe looking for some sort of attack on America that could get Obama that ever-elusive third term?
Hell, another Democrat, FDR, wrote emergency after emergency to get four terms.
Maybe they're just marshalling...
Resources.
It's constitutionally possible in an emergency to declare that kind of martial law to suspend elections and to just ride off into the sunset of pretty much a new aristocracy.
