Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Thursday that the administration has not seen evidence that Iran’s financial support for terrorism has grown since the U.S. paid the regime $1.7 billion in cash in January.
“We have not seen an increase in terrorist financing by Iran,” Lew told the House Financial Services Committee.
But Lew also acknowledged that he wasn’t aware if there was any way to trace how Iran uses the cash. Republicans pressed him on whether the U.S. recorded the serial numbers on the bills that were shipped to Iran, but Lew said he did not know.
The U.S. arranged for $1.7 billion in cash to be sent to Iran as part of a settlement with Iran over a decades-old deal for military equipment that was never finalized.
Republicans have characterized those payments as “ransom,” because the Obama administration has admitted delaying the first payment until four U.S. hostages were released by Iran. The GOP also says Iran perceives the payment to be ransom, and argues that the arrangement will only encourage Iran to take more hostages.
But Lew argued that the payment “was not ransom. It was settlement of a contractual dispute.”
Lew faced aggressive questioning from Republicans over the details of the administration’s transactions with Iran, including whether he personally signed off on the transactions.
“I was aware of them,” he answered. “I was cognizant it was happening.”
The payments were made in cash, he testified, because the U.S. has been successful in cutting Iran off international financial markets. “It has taken Iran a lot of time to get access to its own money,” he said, describing that the fact that the transactions were made in cash was a “technicality.”
Jeb Hensarling, the Republican head of the committee responded that it was not a technicality “to those on the receiving end of Hezbollah missiles in Israel.”
