NEW YORK — The Treasury Department on Saturday confirmed that it wire transferred at least two separate payments to Iran in the last fourteen months.
The admission raises significant new questions about President Obama’s claim that he sent $400 million in cash to Iran because the U.S. doesn’t have a banking relationship with Tehran.
The Obama administration delivered the $400 million in pallets of foreign currency flown aboard an unmarked jetliner in January. The cash was jetted in the same day five American hostages were released from Iranian custody.
Politico reported on Saturday:
The United States made at least two separate payments to the Iranian government via wire transfer within the last 14 months, a Treasury Department spokesman confirmed Saturday, contradicting explanations from President Barack Obama that such payments were impossible.…But a Treasury Department spokesman acknowledged on Saturday that on at least two occasions, the U.S. did make payments to the Iranian government via wire transfer.In July 2015, the same month in which the U.S., Iran and other countries announced a landmark nuclear agreement, the U.S. government paid the Islamic republic approximately $848,000. That payment settled a claim over architectural drawings and fossils that are now housed in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and Iran’s Ministry of Environment, respectively. Then, in April 2016, the U.S. wired Iran approximately $9 million to remove 32 metric tons of its heavy water, which is used to produce plutonium and can aid in the making of nuclear weapons. READ MORE
