Obama on Iran payment: ‘We do not pay ransom’
< < Go Back
President Barack Obama on Thursday dismissed suggestions a $400 million payment to Iran amounted to a ransom paid in return for the release of American hostages.
Confirming the US offered the payment in cash, Obama nevertheless downplayed the delivery’s significance, saying it was not a “nefarious” deal.
And he pushed back on Republican attacks charging that the White House completed the transaction as part of the prisoner swap. The line of argument was intensified by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump just moments before the President’s comments, though he also complicated his message by referring to having seen a video of the transfer whose existence others have doubted.
Obama on Thursday sharply defended the decision to send palettes of cash to Iran, however.
“We do not pay ransom. We didn’t here, and we won’t in the future,” Obama said after reports emerged that the United States delivered palettes of cash to Tehran on the same day the prisoners were freed.
“Those families know we have a policy that we don’t pay ransom,” Obama said. “And the notion that we would somehow start now, in this high-profile way, and announce it to the world, even as we’re looking in the faces of other hostage families whose loved ones are being held hostage, and saying to them we don’t pay ransom, defies logic.”
More From CNN: