Reuters, Washington :
The US secretly organised an “airlift of USD 400 million” in hard cash to Iran that coincided with the release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to a media report.
The transfer was as part of the first installment of a USD 1.7 billion settlement to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ reported.
The State Department has strongly refuted any link between payment of the settlement amount and release of four American prisoners by Iran.
“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,” Kirby said.
The US secretly organised an “airlift of USD 400 million” in hard cash to Iran that coincided with the release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to a media report.
The transfer was as part of the first installment of a USD 1.7 billion settlement to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ reported.
The State Department has strongly refuted any link between payment of the settlement amount and release of four American prisoners by Iran.
“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,” Kirby said.
