As tawdry and distasteful as it appears, ransoming hostages is as old a tradition in statecraft as you're ever going to find. As for the particulars of this deal it seems like there's a bit more going on than just a straight hostage for cash swap, so I don't really know what to say? . . . Hopefully we got more out of the deal than just the hostages I guess.
Or we gave them $1.8B to spend on their nuke program after they break the deal. Like N. Korea did. That's not relevant to the topic, though. We didn't just release their frozen assets, we put $400M in crates and delivered cash to the hostage takers.
Point is...we don't know what we got in the deal or why they did it the way they did. I don't believe it was all ransom for 4 hostages.
"But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible." We know this.
Often that sort of sabre rattling is covering up things we don't know and saving face would be to make it look like they gained more than we did...but arms and oil and access to pipelines or assurance the Russians don't control pipelines might be in play ...it's what we don't know that I'm alluding to. Maybe you're right Denny and they spent 100 mil apiece on these guys...maybe these guys have intel worth billions..who knows?
Not ransom, not secret, not new. In 1979 after Iranians took over the US embassy and made the staff hostages, the US government in retaliation froze all Iranian assets in US banks. The money has sat there since. Part of the deal whereby Iran agreed to dismantle its nuclear program was "unfreezing" the assets. It was Iranian money, not US money. The article in the treaty was announced months ago. It was reported in the NY Times and on CNN and the SF Chronicle among others. But with the Trump campaign imploding, a fake scandal is just what is needed to deflect attention.
The interesting part of the story is what happened after the money arrived in Iran. It was all sent to the Clinton Foundation, who sent it directly to ISIS in Libya to fund attacks on American soil. I'm telling you, you just can't make this stuff up. barfo
I find it amusing that conservatives in the US are using Iranian government propaganda to attack Obama. Death to Obama's America! I can't wait til Trump nukes'em.
U.S. officials acknowledged $400M for the hostages. That's exactly what we know. Paid $400M for hostages. No amount of twisted logic or imagined circumstances changes this.
The ransom seems to have gone up. Years ago, the standard, to hand a Muslim hostage holder was a money bag containing a $10 bill, rubber banded to like size note pad. He could make like he got bag of money, or bitch, but we took the hostage.
Congress is not the only place where the payment was characterized as ransom. Commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were quoted in state media saying bluntly that the money was paid in exchange for the American prisoners.
Funny how you assume that the Iranian government is telling the truth and our government is lying, despite lacking any real knowledge of the subject at hand. Twisted. barfo
I have been lied to by the guys you defend. The Iranians? If your guys are liars, these guys are telling the truth. Liar says, "it wasn't ransom" so it really was. The Iranians say it is ransom, the truth.
Yeah, I think your bias is clouding your reason. Feel free to move to Iran, though. Maybe you could convince them to put Trump in charge. barfo
Logic escapes you. It's rather binary. The proven liars say it wasn't ransom, therefore it was. No, I don't think there's a chance they're telling the truth this time, though there's always a first. Benghazi was about a video posted on the Internet. Lies.
That's not logic, that's DennyMath. Lying isn't binary. People can lie about some things and not others. In fact everyone does, presumably including you. barfo
