Paying Ransom to Iran
Lee Smith, The Weekly Standard
" . . . Let's look at the details. Administration spokesmen argue that the $400 million paid out was Tehran's money to begin with. But that's not true. The $400 million was a payment received from the shah of Iran for a weapons deal with Washington that was never consummated because he was toppled by the Islamic revolution in 1979. Thus Washington held the money. Later, American victims of Iranian terrorism won judgments against the Islamic Republic in U.S. courts, and the Clinton administration, as a
Newsweek article reported in January, promised that the settlements would be paid out of the $400 million. But the Clinton White House never reimbursed the Treasury Department, nor did the Bush administration. The $400 million that Obama aides say belongs to Iran should have long ago been distributed to Iran's American victims and their families. Instead, it was U.S. taxpayers who compensated the victims of Iranian terror. And then we paid $400 million a second time, in January, to the Iranians themselves. The $1.3 billion of interest that the United States is supposed to have owed the Iranians is simply a fiction the Obama administration contrived to sweeten the pot, since the United States was under no legal obligation to pay Iran money that was no longer Iran's. Yes, it was ransom, billed to the U.S. taxpayer. . . ."
