Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said Sunday night that he’ll hold a hearing to get to the bottom of the $400 million cash payment to Iran, which the Obama administration has admitted was linked to the release of four U.S. hostages
Kirk and other Republicans have said that timing essentially means the U.S. paid ransom for the release of the hostages in violation of U.S. policy. But Kirk also warned that the payment may have contributed to Iran’s ability to support terrorist activities.
“Just as the administration last week reversed seven months of fierce denial that the $400 million foreign cash payment in any way related to Iran’s release of American hostages, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the formation of a new terrorist ‘Shiite Liberation Army’ under Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani to fight in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen,” said Kirk.
“The American people have a right to know if any U.S. taxpayer money sent to Iran is going to finance the new ‘Shiite Liberation Army,’ Hezbollah or Hamas terrorists targeting our allies in Israel, or any other Iranian terrorist activities,” he said.
Kirk chairs the Senate Banking Subcommittee with oversight of the Treasury Department, Iran sanctions laws and terrorist financing.
In an interview published over the weekend, Kirk referred to Obama as a “drug dealer-in-chief” for his decision to make the cash payment to Iran.
“We can’t have the president of the United States acting like the drug dealer in chief,” Kirk told the the State Journal-Register’s editorial board, “giving clean packs of money to a … state sponsor of terror.”
The Obama administration has defended the payment by saying it was money the U.S. owed Iran for a 1979 arms deal that was never completed, and said it used that money as a lever to push for the release of hostages.
