By hiding details, the administration has provided its critics with ammunition.
On August 5, I wrote in these pages that the Obama administration's $1.7 billion settlement with the Iranian government—coinciding with the transfer of five Americans from Iranian custody in exchange for seven Iranians in U.S. custody—was being politicized by congressional Republicans and used as a way to further bludgeon President Barack Obama's foreign policy in an intensely competitive election year. GOP accusations that the $1.7 billion payment served as ransom money to the Iranians in order to get the Americans freed was a largely unfounded judgment given the circumstances of the transaction—the money, after all, was owed to the Iranians after a weapons deal from the Shah's era was cancelled once the mullahs took control of the country. The release of the Americans, administration officials argued, was an entirely separate negotiating process that happened to occur at precisely the same time that the thirty-seven-year financial dispute was resolved.
The controversy over the $1.7 billion is not necessarily due to the nature of the transaction, but rather how the first $400 million installment was paid—on an unmarked cargo plane that was delayed until the plane carrying American prisoners took off from Iranian soil. Even more sketchy than how the entire ordeal was choreographed, however, is how the White House chose to deal with the press on this issue. To say the least, it wasn't good. At worst, it was a public-relations catastrophe on par with the administration's initial explanations about the September 11, 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks.
Although it is certainly true that President Obama told the American people about the $1.7 billion settlement to the Iranians, the details were entirely left out of his remarks. Administration officials in the White House and the State Department didn't clear up the president's remarks with those details to the press afterwards, but rather chose to talk about the settlement and the prisoner exchange in broad terms. Why this was the case is unknown, but if the past several weeks of congressional ire are a hint, it would appear to have something to do with the fact that the transaction would inevitably be portrayed by members of Congress as an illegal ransom payment.
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