Chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour joined Tuesday’s CNN This Morning to celebrate her 40 years at the network as well as to discuss current foreign policy issues including the Biden Administration’s $6 billion hostage bribe to Iran, which for her and co-host Poppy Harlow is no big deal because it “is Iranian money” and shows conservatives are hypocrites.
While discussing some technical points of the deal, Harlow claimed “This is about a waiver to banks, to release $6 billion of Iranian money to banks in Qatar. With some right—with some restrictions of how it can be used. It's a development the right is criticizing but it’s necessary to get them out.”
That a $6 billion ransom payment was necessary to get them out is, at the very least, debatable, but worse for Harlow was the claim that the deal comes with restrictions. In an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi declared the money will be spent “wherever we need it.”
For her part, Amanpour agreed that Biden’s critics are being hypocritical, “Yes. Firstly, the right or whoever you say are criticizing, have gone into these deals before. President Trump himself has released Iranian prisoners in -- Iranian prisoners in a swap to get Americans out of Iran. There has been Iranian money given back in the past. Iranian money in order to get Americans who are wrongly detained back to their families.”
It is true that Trump engaged in prisoner swaps, but that is different from ones that include cash payments. Speaking of cash payments, the most notorious example that Amanpour alluded to was the “pallets of cash” episode from the Obama years.
Amanpour proceed to recall an interview she did with Siamak Namazi, who spent “eight-and-a-half years in an Iranian jail just for being American” and that “this is Iranian money, not American taxpayer money that South Korea, not America, South Korea owes to Iran for oil that South Korea bought from Iran.”
Whether the money is Iranian, South Korean, or American doesn’t really matter. That money is sanctioned because of Tehran’s behavior and that behavior has not changed.
This segment was sponsored by Temper-pedic.
Here is a transcript for the September 12 show:
CNN This Morning
9/12/2023
8:20 PM ET
POPPY HARLOW: There is a development this morning in this U.S. effort--
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yeah.
HARLOW: -- to get five Americans released from prison in Iran. This is about a waiver to banks, to release--
AMANPOUR: Yeah.
HARLOW: -- $6 billion of Iranian money to banks in Qatar. With some right—with some restrictions of how it can be used. It's a development the right is criticizing but it’s necessary to get them out--
AMANPOUR: Well, first, I want to say this –
HARLOW: -- I wanted to ask about your interview, too.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Firstly, the right or whoever you say are criticizing, have gone into these deals before. President Trump himself has released Iranian prisoners in -- Iranian prisoners in a swap to get Americans out of Iran. There has been Iranian money given back in the past. Iranian money in order to get Americans who are wrongly detained back to their families.
What this one is about, and I have been reporting this for a while, ever since I got that interview with the longest held American-Iranian, Siamak Namazi, in Evin Prison, the most extraordinary ever interview that I have ever conducted. It's just never happened before. It was so utterly compelling, so sad, that this American had been held for eight-and-a-half years in an Iranian jail just for being American.
HARLOW: Yeah.
AMANPOUR: And so, yes, this is Iranian money, not American taxpayer money that South Korea, not America, South Korea owes to Iran for oil that South Korea bought from Iran.
That the United States then stopped the transaction because of the sanctions. Now they want to get their people back, rightly so, their five Iranians, who have been released from the Evin jail, who are under house arrest in Tehran waiting for this final piece of the deal.
So, hopefully, they will be able to come back soon and that involves Qatar sending a plane, getting them out of, you know, Iran, taking them to Qatar, back to the U.S., and this is the last, apparently, you know, stumbling block, the idea of getting waivers, because Iran is so heavily sanctioned it can't even get its own money back.
