The House passed legislation late Thursday that would prohibit the federal government from making any cash payments to Iran, in protest of President Obama’s recently discovered decision to pay Iran $1.7 billion in cash in January.
And while the White House has said Obama would veto the bill, 16 Democrats joined with Republicans to pass the measure, 254-163.
Obama announced the huge payout to Iran months earlier, and said it was part of a settlement for a decades-old transaction for U.S. military equipment that was never finalized.
But officials only recently admitted that the first installment of that payment was delayed in order to ensure Iran released four U.S. hostages, and that all three installments were paid in cash.
Those facts outraged Republicans, who said the transaction was effectively a ransom payment to ensure the return of the hostages, in violation of U.S. policy. They also said giving Iran $1.7 billion in cash would make it easier for Iran to fund acts of terrorism abroad.
The bill, from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., is explicitly aimed at “prohibiting future ransom payments to Iran,” a move Royce said is needed to rein in the Obama administration and future governments.
“It is not in the interest of the United States to have the regime have cold, hard cash,” Royce said during the floor debate on his bill. He said Obama’s own Justice Department said it was worried about the optics of the payment.
“Why? Because when you do so, you can expect to get more of the same kind of action from a state like Iran,” he said. Royce said Iran has already taken new U.S. hostages, actions that show the U.S. may have created a perverse incentive for Iran.
“Why ignore your own lawyers?” Royce added of the administration’s decision to ignore the Justice Department.
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., spoke on behalf of most Democrats by saying Republicans continue to misconstrue the nature of the payment to Iran. Democrats and the Obama administration have said for months it was not ransom, and that it was repayment of Iran’s money the U.S. was holding, plus interest.
“I think holding Iran’s money until Iran released American detainees was a pretty shrewd bargain,” Engel said. “But whatever we think, using the word ‘ransom’ turns this bill into a political hot button, a poke in the eye of the administration.”
But Republicans shot back that the State Department has admitted it used the money as “leverage” in the final moments of the talks to get the hostages home.
“I translate the word ‘leverage’ to mean ‘ransom,'” said Rep. Leonard Lance, R-N.J.
Royce’s bill would reaffirm U.S. policy against paying for the release of prisoners held overseas, and explicitly prohibit any payment of currency to Iran.
Language in the bill also holds that if the U.S. has to settle future claims with Iran, those settlements cannot be paid in cash, and must be licensed.
The prohibition on cash payments to Iran could only be lifted if the government finds that Iran is not longer designated as a center of money laundering, and Iran is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism.
Senate Republicans have indicated they would also try to pass the bill, but in light of Obama’s veto threat, a two-thirds majority in each chamber will be needed to override that veto.
