Are you old enough to remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis? If not, here is a summary, courtesy of u-s-history.com:
On November 4, 1979, an angry mob of some 300 to 500 “students” who called themselves “Imam’s Disciples,” laid siege to the American Embassy in Teheran, Iran, to capture and hold hostage 66 U.S. citizens and diplomats. Although women and African-Americans were released a short time later, 51 hostages remained imprisoned for 444 days with another individual released because of illness midway through the ordeal.
…Upon the death of the shah in July [1980] (which neutralized one demand) and the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September (necessitating weapons acquisition), Iran became more amenable to reopening negotiations for the hostages’ release.
In the late stages of the presidential race with Ronald Reagan, Carter, given those new parameters, might have been able to bargain with the Iranians, which might have clinched the election for him. The 11th-hour heroics were dubbed an “October Surprise”* by the Reagan camp — something they did not want to see happen.
Allegations surfaced that William Casey, director of the Reagan campaign, and some CIA operatives, secretly met with Iranian officials in Europe to arrange for the hostages’ release, but not until after the election. If true, some observers aver, dealing with a hostile foreign government to achieve a domestic administration’s defeat would have been grounds for charges of treason.
Reagan won the election, partly because of the failure of the Carter administration to bring the hostages home. Within minutes of Reagan’s inauguration, the hostages were released.
That was then. This is now.
Boys and girls, this is the difference between Ronald Wilson Reagan, a Strong American President, and Petulant President Pantywaist.
The Wall Street Journal reports that
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.
Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.
The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.
“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,” President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.
Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.
“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.”
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.
Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused President Barack Obama of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.”
“This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures” of Americans, he said.
Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.
At the time of the prisoner release, Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House portrayed it as a diplomatic breakthrough. Mr. Kerry cited the importance of “the relationships forged and the diplomatic channels unlocked over the course of the nuclear talks.”
Meanwhile, U.S. officials have said they were certain Washington was going to lose the arbitration in The Hague, where Iran was seeking more than $10 billion, and described the settlement as a bargain for taxpayers.
Iranian press reports have quoted senior Iranian defense officials describing the cash as a ransom payment. The Iranian foreign ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The $400 million was paid in foreign currency because any transaction with Iran in U.S. dollars is illegal under U.S. law. Sanctions also complicate Tehran’s access to global banks.
“Sometimes the Iranians want cash because it’s so hard for them to access things in the international financial system,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the January cash delivery. “They know it can take months just to figure out how to wire money from one place to another.”
The Obama administration has refused to disclose how it paid any of the $1.7 billion, despite congressional queries, outside of saying that it wasn’t paid in dollars. Lawmakers have expressed concern that the cash would be used by Iran to fund regional allies, including the Assad regime in Syria and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.
The U.S. and United Nations believe Tehran is subsidizing the Assad regime’s war in Syria through cash and energy shipments. Iran has acknowledged providing both financial and military aid to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and deploying Iranian soldiers there.
But John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said last week that there was evidence much of the money Iran has received from sanctions relief was being used for development projects. “The money, the revenue that’s flowing into Iran is being used to support its currency, to provide moneys to the departments and agencies, build up its infrastructure,” Mr. Brennan said at a conference in Aspen, Colo.
The U.S. and Iran entered into secret negotiations to secure the release of Americans imprisoned in Iran in November 2014, according to U.S. and European officials. Switzerland’s foreign minister, Didier Burkhalter, offered to host the discussions.
The Swiss have represented the U.S.’s diplomatic interests in Iran since Washington closed its embassy in Tehran following the 1979 hostage crisis.
There is a reason, besides his duties as Secretary of State, that John F. Kerry has done the bulk of “negotiating” with the Mad Mullahs of the Rogue State of Iran.
They’re “family”.
As noted on the website of Lt. Col. Allen B. West…
…in 2009, the daughter of Secretary of State John Kerry, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, John Kerry’s younger daughter by his first wife, married an Iranian-American physician named Dr. Brian (Behrooz) Vala Nahed.
…Brian (Behrooz) Nahed is son of Nooshin and Reza Vala Nahid of Los Angeles. Brian’s Persian birth name is “Behrooz Vala Nahid” but it is now shortened and Americanized in the media to “Brian Nahed.” At the time his engagement to Bradford Kerry, there was rarely any mention of Nahed’s Persian/Iranian ancestry, and even the official wedding announcement in the October 2009 issue of New York Times carefully avoids any reference to Dr. Nahed (Nahid)’s birthplace (which is uncommon in wedding announcements) and starts his biography from his college years.
…Zarif is the current minister of foreign affairs in the Rouhani administration and has held various significant diplomatic and cabinet posts since the 1990s. He was Kerry’s chief counterpart in the nuclear deal negotiations.
Secretary Kerry and Zarif first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse. What a surprise. I have to say, connecting the dots gets more and more frightening.
But it gets even worse. Guess who was the best man at the 2009 wedding between Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Behrouz Vala Nahed? Javad Zarif’s son.
Does this bother anyone at all?
Apparently Kerry only revealed his daughter’s marriage to an Iranian-American once he had taken over as Secretary of State. But the subject never came up in his Senate confirmation hearing, either because Kerry never disclosed it, or because his former colleagues were “too polite” to bring it up.
The 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, has purposely and surreptitiously handed a Rogue State of Radical Muslim Barbarians the means of the destruction of both the United States of America and our staunch ally, Israel, with his toothless “Nuclear Agreement”
Why is the President of these United States, Barack Hussein Obama, trusting Iran, an enemy of freedom, to stand by its “Agreement” to refrain from nuking the United States of America and Israel?
He has given Iran everything they wanted: their money, nuclear capability, and acquiescence by the Government of the United States of America, literally, encouraging the world’s popular of Islamic Terrorists to kidnap our citizens, with the promise of a huge payday, while he remains president.
Here’s a question for you:
What if a condition of the Iran Prisoner Swap Agreement and the closure of the “Iran Deal” was that we humble ourselves by allowing our Navy Personnel to be captured and used as propaganda?
Iran remains our mortal enemy, who wants every single American Infidel beheaded, and, who, to this day, refers to this sacred land as “The Great Satan”.
It is well known, that a young Obama, after his mother wed a quite well-off fellow from Indonesia, attended a Madrassa, or Muslim School, in Jakarta.
I believe that the time he spent among “the religion of peace” in his youth, and the 20 years he spent under the “Reformed Muslim” (Liberation Theology) teachings of “ex”-American Muslim, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, molded and cemented his attitude toward Muslims.
Obama innately trusts Muslims…even radical ones.
Obama, Kerry, and the rest of his Liberal Dhimmi Cabal has shown where their loyalties unequivocally lie, with their braggadocio over this Chamberlain-esque “deal” that is destined to not only blow up in their faces, but also “where alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears” and in the heart of the Holy Land, itself.
Obama’s concern is not with our allies nor the safety of the citizens and the military of the United States of America.
Obama, as he always has been, is concerned with himself and leaving a marvelous legacy as president.
Giving Iran the means to “kill the infidels” will definitely cement Obama’s Legacy…if there is anyone left to remember it.
Iran has always been, since the ouster of the Shah, a rogue nation. They are a threat to every nation who stands in the way of their crazed Political Ideology, disguised as a “religion”.
Either due to naiveté or simple over-estimation of their own intelligence, on the part of Obama and his Administration, as regards their “superior intellect”, to quote Fred Thompson, as Admiral Josh Painter, in the great movie “The Hunt for Red October”…
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.
Obama not only paid ransom to Terrorists, but he also screwed both God’s Chosen People and the nation which he is sworn to protect…for the sake of his own presidential legacy and ego’s contentment.
Until He Comes,
KJ