Politics 'Ransom' paid to Iran?

I think they paid the ransom. They were desperate for the nuke deal with Iran, and gave them pretty much whatever they wanted. When confronted with how bad a deal it is, the response has been that Iran is no longer building nukes (out in the open, see N. Korea, similar deal from the Clinton era). What is Iran going to do with $1.7B? Fund terrorism. Duh.

Iran is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the US government and the international community. They fund Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, among others.

If we really wanted a good deal, we'd have offered them in to the world community in exchange for halting the nuke program AND ending their support for terrorist groups .

No conspiracy theory needed, just the cold hard facts.

 

If that was filmed in Iran, then our news organizations weren't there with cameras.

 

A minority fundamentalist group?

Also, why $400M instead of the full $1.8B we supposedly owe?

The sanctions actually seemed to be working. Instead of using the upper hand we gained, we gave them everything and we got a photo op. No war was needed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terrorism

Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of Iran has been accused by members of the international community of funding, providing equipment, weapons, training and giving sanctuary to terrorists.[1]

The United States State Department describes Iran as an “active state sponsor of terrorism.”[2] US Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice elaborated stating, "Iran has been the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism in important regions like Lebanon through Hezbollah in the Middle East, in the Palestinian Territories, and we have deep concerns about what Iran is doing in the south of Iraq."[1]

...

The United States State Department states that this organization provides support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad in Israel. They also say that Pasdaran has given much support and training to terrorists supporting the Palestinian resistance. They are also accused of aiding the Iraqi insurgency in southern Iraq.[3] On September 26, 2007, the United States Senatepassed legislation by a vote of 76-22 designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.[4] U.S. President George W. Bush and Congress labeled the group under the guidelines established by Executive Order 13224issued after the September 11, 2001 attacks.[5]

In August 2012, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei instructed the Revolutionary Guards and Quds Force to increase their terror attacks due to what the Iranian government perceived as their interests being threatened by United Nations sanctions and the West's support of Syrian opposition.[6]


Lots more about this minority fundamentalist group at the link, and many other links.

 

From January, before we knew about the $400M ransom payment.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-hostage-triumph-1453053424

Iran’s Hostage Triumph
The U.S. pays a steep ransom for the release of four innocents.

 

Sanctions. A deal that ends support for terrorism.

Truth from our leaders.

It's not asking that much.

 

Sanctions were working against Iran. One size does not fit all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran

The sanctions bring difficulties to Iran's $483 billion, oil-dominated economy.[15] Data published by the Iranian Central Bankshow a declining trend in the share of Iranian exports from oil-products (2006/2007: 84.9%, 2007/2008: 86.5%, 2008/2009: 85.5%, 2009/2010: 79.8%, 2010/2011 (first three quarters): 78.9%).[49] The sanctions have had a substantial adverse effect on the Iranian nuclear program by making it harder to acquire specialized materials and equipment needed for the program. The social and economic effects of sanctions have also been severe,[50] with even those who doubt their efficacy, such as John Bolton, describing the EU sanctions, in particular, as "tough, even brutal."[51] Iranian foreign minister Ali Akhbar Salehi conceded that the sanctions are having an impact.[52] China has become Iran's largest remaining trading partner.[32]

Sanctions have reduced Iran's access to products needed for the oil and energy sectors, have prompted many oil companies to withdraw from Iran, and have also caused a decline in oil production due to reduced access to technologies needed to improve their efficiency.[citation needed] According to Undersecretary of State William Burns, Iran may be annually losing as much as $60 billion in energy investment.[53] Many international companies have also been reluctant to do business with Iran for fear of losing access to larger Western markets.[citation needed] As well as restricting export markets, the sanctions have reduced Iran's oil income by increasing the costs of repatriating revenues in complicated ways that sidestep the sanctions; Iranian analysts estimate the budget deficit for the 2011/2012 fiscal year, which in Iran ends in late March, at between $30bn to $50bn.[54] The effects of U.S. sanctions include expensive basic goods for Iranian citizens, and an aging and increasingly unsafe civil aircraft fleet. According to the Arms Control Association, the international arms embargo against Iran is slowly reducing Iran's military capabilities, largely due to its dependence on Russian and Chinese military assistance. The only substitute is to find compensatory measures requiring more time and money, and which are less effective.[55][56]According to at least one analyst (Fareed Zakaria), the market for imports in Iran is dominated by state enterprises and state-friendly enterprises, because the way to get around the sanctions is smuggling, and smuggling requires strong connections with the government. This has weakened Iranian civil society and strengthened the state.[citation needed]

The value of the Iranian rial has plunged since autumn 2011, it is reported to have devalued up to 80%, falling 10% immediately after the imposition of the EU oil embargo[57] since early October 2012,[58] causing widespread panic among the Iranian public.[54] In January 2012, the country raised the interest rate on bank deposits by up to 6 percentage points in order to curtail the rial's depreciation. The rate increase was a setback for Ahmadinejad, who had been using below-inflation rates to provide cheap loans to the poor, though naturally Iranian bankers were delighted by the increase.[54] Not long after, and just a few days after Iran's economic minister declared that "there was no economic justification" for devaluing the currency because Iran's foreign exchange reserves were "not only good, but the extra oil revenues are unprecedented,"[54] the country announced its intention to devalue by about 8.5 percent against the U.S. dollar, set a new exchange rate and vowed to reduce the black market's influence (booming, of course, because of the lack of confidence in the rial).[59] The Iranian Central Bank desperately tried to keep the value of the rial afloat in the midst of the late 2012 decline by pumping petrodollars into the system to allow the rial to compete against the US dollar.[60] Efforts to control inflation rates were set forth by the government through a three-tiered-multiple-exchange-rate;[61] this effect has failed to prevent the rise in cost of basic goods, simultaneously adding to the public's reliance on the Iranian black-market exchange rate network.[60] Government officials attempted to stifle the black-market by offering rates 2% below the alleged black-market rates, but demand seems to be outweighing their efforts.[62][63]

Sanctions tightened further when major supertanker companies said they would stop loading Iranian cargo. Prior attempts to reduce Iran's oil income failed because many vessels are often managed by companies outside the United States and the EU; however, EU actions in January extended the ban to ship insurance. This insurance ban will affect 95 percent of the tanker fleet because their insurance falls under rules governed by European law. "It's the insurance that's completed the ban on trading with Iran," commented one veteran ship broker.[64] This completion of the trading ban left Iran struggling to find a buyer for nearly a quarter of its annual oil exports.[16] Iran has sought to manage the impact of international sanctions and limit capital outflows by promoting a "resistance economy," replacing imports with domestic goods and banning luxury imports such as computers and mobile phones.[65] This is predicted to lead to an increase in smuggling, as "people will find a way to smuggle in what the Iranian consumer wants."[66] To sustain oil imports, Iran has also provided domestic insurance for tankers shipping Iranian oil.[67] Iran had hoped to sell more to Chinese and Indian refiners, though such attempts seem unlikely to succeed, particularly since China—the single-largest buyer of Iranian crude—has been curtailing its oil imports from Iran down to half their former level.[16]

Another effect of the sanctions, in the form of Iran's retaliatory threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, has led to Iraqi plans to open export routes for its crude via Syria, though Iraq's deputy prime minister for energy affairs doubted Iran would ever attempt a closure.[64]

After Iranian banks blacklisted by the EU were disconnected from the SWIFT banking network, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz stated that Iran would now find it more difficult to export oil and import products. According to Steinitz, Iran would be forced to accept only cash or gold, which is impossible when dealing with billions of dollars. Steinitz told the Israeli cabinet that Iran's economy might collapse as a result.[68][69]

The effects of the sanctions are usually denied in the Iranian press.[70][71] Iran has also taken measures to circumvent sanctions, notably by using front countries or companies and by using barter trade.[72] At other times the Iranian government has advocated a "resistance economy" in response to sanctions, such as using more oil internally as export markets dry up and import substitution industrialization of Iran.[73][74]

In October 2012, Iran began struggling to halt a decline in oil exports which could plummet further due to Western sanctions, and the International Energy Agency estimated that Iranian exports fell to a record of 860,000 bpd in September 2012 from 2.2 million bpd at the end of 2011. The results of this fall led to a drop in revenues and clashes on the streets of Tehran when the local currency, the rial, collapsed. The output in September 2012 was Iran's lowest since 1988.[75]

 

They can train with the $100B we give them, or without. I choose without.

If the people become too upset, they'll overthrow their government, as has happened there before. Ask Jimmy Carter how that worked out for him.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/w...ern-sanctions-are-inflicting-damage.html?_r=0

Iran Admits Western Sanctions Are Inflicting Damage