Former Secretary of State John Kerry denied that money from a $1.7 billion payment the United States made to Iran in 2016 went toward funding Iran’s recent attack on U.S. bases in Iraq.
Kerry described the payment as a “little bit of money” and accused Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of lying about what Iran used the 2016 cash payment for. Kerry asserted that most of the money was used to pay off Iranian debts and fund economic programs.
“We gave them a little bit of money that was released at that period of time,” Kerry said. “But the fact is the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] had all the money it wanted.”
“It’s just not true that that money specifically directly went to the IRGC,” Kerry continued. “Money is fungible in any budget. The IRGC had its funding; they had its missiles long before we made any kind of arrangement with Iran.”
On Thursday, Pompeo blasted the Obama administration’s foreign policy toward Iran, saying that “all the things that we are now confronting are a direct result of the resources that the regime had available as a result of that terrible nuclear deal.”
