U.S. Ransom to Iran Puts Americans in Danger

Obama administration officials in January portrayed Iran’s release of four imprisoned Americans as a triumph of diplomacy. Turns out, it may have been the result of a secret cash payment — little different than a ransom to a two-bit kidnapper.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that President Obama approved a cash payment to the Iranian regime in January. An unmarked cargo plane filled with pallets containing $400 million in foreign currency landed in Tehran, an apparent payoff to win the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and three others who had been held since 2014.

“It certainly is a stimulus for Iran and others to take Americans.”

Iranian news sources, according to WSJ, reported that the plane landed on Jan. 17 — the same day that the regime released the Americans. Obama administration officials have characterized the payment as an installment toward $1.7 billion in frozen Iranian funds that the United States had agreed to return as part of the Iranian nuclear deal. But Iranian defense officials described it more crassly in the Iranian press — ransom.

Terrorism experts said the payment violates longstanding U.S. policy against paying for the release of hostages.

“It certainly is a stimulus for Iran and others to take Americans,” said Daniel Pipes, president of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum. “Historically, the Europeans have been ready to pay ransom — but the Americans have not. This is very much at variance with precedent. Also, it’s a very large sum of money per prisoner.”

In fact, more Americans have already been imprisoned in Iran. The intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two Iranian-Americans, as well as dual-nationals from France, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

“We’ve seen, in fact, additional Americans captured in Iran,” said Kyle Shideler, director of threat assessment at the Center for Security Policy. “It had the exact effect you would have expected.”

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Tawfik Hamid, a former Muslim radical who now advocates against Islamic extremism, said the money paid by the United States will likely bolster Iran’s support of international terrorism. Terrorist organizations will probably also take note, he said.

“It’s sending a message all over the world that all they have to do to get money … is kidnap some of your people,” he said. “It will become a business for then. It’s a very bad model.”

America’s aversion to giving in to extortion demands dates to the early days of the Republic. The United States initially paid $60,000 to free captured American sailors in the early 1800s. Thomas Jefferson’s reversal of that policy led to war with the Barbary pirates. When Iran took American hostages at the U.S embassy in Tehran following the Islamic revolution, then-President Jimmy Carter attempted a rescue mission in 1980.

More recently, U.S. forces tried to rescue journalist James Foley and others taken hostage by the Islamic State. The mission failed, and ISIS terrorists executed the Americans.

The United States has dealt with rogue regimes in the past, including Iran. The biggest scandal of Ronald Reagan’s administration stemmed from a secret arms deal with Iran. And part of Obama’s deal to free the four imprisoned Americans included the release of Iranians convicted or charged with offenses related to violating sanctions against the country. The U.S. also traded five captured Taliban members to win the release of captured Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

But Pipes and Shideler said they could not recall a similar case when the United States handed over cash — particularly such large sums — to facilitate the release of imprisoned Americans.

The Obama administration has said the cash handover was simply part of an agreement to release $1.7 billion of funds that the shah paid to the Pentagon for fighter jets before the 1979 revolution. Officials told The Wall Street Journal that America would probably have been forced to pay that money as the result of proceedings in The Hague.

“I don’t think that’s going to be very convincing to the American public,” Shideler said, pointing to the optics of stuffing cash in pallets. “This great secrecy that the Obama administration has undertaken at every step of the [Iran] process … really has been detrimental to our foreign policy.”

The United States has been willing to watch Americans killed rather than give in to blackmail. One result, Shideler said, is that Europeans have been kidnapped at much higher rates than Americans.

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“Kidnapping and ransom is extremely lucrative — a very successful cash business,” he said. “For a private sector organization, it might make sense [to pay ransoms],” he added. “They don’t have the foreign policy considerations of a nation-state.”

To make the payment, the Obama administration first had to convert dollars into Swiss francs, euros, and other currencies. That’s because while no statute explicitly prohibits paying ransoms, the law does prohibit giving Iran access to U.S. dollars.

Pipes, who used to work in the State and Defense Departments, suggested that is a distinction without much of a difference.

“It’s being fastidious about something small when something quite a bit larger is at stake,” he said.