A literal pallet of cash sent from the US to Iran, from Iranian television.
I swear, you can’t write this shite.
Video from Iran TV, above. The full video of the ransom, cash and aircraft is below.
This is right out of a corny grade B movie thriller. Except that it’s neither thrilling nor is it fiction. It’s simply an Iranian economic stimulus, courtesy of the Barack Hussein Obama administration via the United States of America.
And guess what? YOU paid for it. The American Taxpayer. The same American Taxpayer that provided Obama’s administration with the greatest amount of revenue in the history of the United States.
First, the story from 9News.com/AU:
US secretly airlifted $400m in cash to Iran on wooden pallets
by Matthew Henry
The Obama administration secretly airlifted $400m in cash to Iran in an unmarked cargo plane earlier this year in what Republicans allege was a “ransom payment”.
Wads of Euros and Swiss francs stacked on wooden pallets were delivered in January just as five American prisoners were granted clemency by Tehran, unnamed sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Procured from central banks in the Netherlands and Switzerland, the cash payment was not disclosed when President Obama announced the release of the hostages on January 17.
If that doesn’t conjure up a mental photo of a prototypical illegal exchange of cash in the dark of night during a rainstorm, I don’t know what does. “Wads of Euros and Swiss francs stacked on wooden pallets.” Sheesh.
Even Paul Ryan, RINO, said:
House Speaker Paul Ryan, one of the Republican party’s most senior officials, said the report, if true, “confirms our longstanding suspicion that the administration paid a ransom in exchange for Americans unjustly detained in Iran.
To continue:
The White House has denied any link between the payment and the release of hostages, saying it was the first installment in $1.7b owed to Iran over a failed arms deal just before Ayatollah Khomeini seized power 37 years ago.
“This $400 million is actually money that the Iranians had paid into a US account in 1979 as part of a transaction to procure military equipment,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
“It is against the policy of the United States to pay ransom for hostages.”
I have but only one response: the definition of ransom.
Charles Krauthammer nailed it, gangsta-style.
“Because it kinda feels like some spy novel, or a crime novel because cash was exchanged.”
The DOJ objected to the way the “deal” was structured, as they said — rightly so — that it would do nothing but appear as a ransom payout for the hostages because those two things occurred the same day.
Also, that is completely exclusive of the fact that, unless one wants to embolden hostage-takers, villains, dictators and criminals, a country or an entity or an individual should never pay a ransom because — obviously, due to the nature of criminals — the hostage-taking will not stop. It merely proves that the act of hostage-taking is productive.
Further, that cash will be used in furtherance of one thing: terrorist acts against Muslims and against the West. Violence, death, chaos and carnage.
I don’t believe in coincidences and, apparently, the hostages don’t believe it either. From the NYPost.com:
Hostage: We couldn’t leave until second plane landed in Iran
by Joe Tacopino
One of the American hostages who was released the day the United States sent $400 million to Iran said his plane to freedom was not allowed to take off until “another plane” arrived in Tehran, according to a report.
Pastor Saeed Abedini, who was among four Americans released this past Jan. 17, told Fox Business he wound up waiting for an extended time for the second plane to reach the Iranian capital and was never told why the arriving aircraft was so important.
“I just remember the night at the airport sitting for hours and hours there, and I asked police, ‘Why are you not letting us go?’ ” Abedini said. “He said, ‘We are waiting for another plane so if that plane doesn’t come, we never let [you] go.’ ”
Please remember, however, that Mr Obama says that is the most dissolute of coincidences and no logical thinking person could possibly make the connection between a pallet full of cash and the release of the hostages.
But here is the conspicuous logic that Mr Obama fails to understand:
Suddenly, after 36 years — and entirely coincidentally, claims the White House — Obama decides it’s time to settle the matter of the $400 million. He’s going to give Iran back its $400 million, plus $1.3 billion in taxpayer money. And — entirely coincidentally — the hostages were being freed. Said Obama on January 17, “With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well.”
36 years, yes; but also seven years of the Obama Administration. Why that day? Why that shipment? Why cash? Do you think that Obama couldn’t have picked up the telephone, spoken to Iran and then ordered that $400 million be wired or transferred to Iran?
If not, I have nuclear centrifuges in Iran I’d like to sell you.
Oh wait, Iran’s not selling them. They’re too busy being used right now.
BZ