Obama didn’t give them shit, he refunded their own money. It is factual that there is no banking connection between the two nations. Sorry if facts interfere with your agenda.
What’s the big deal about cash? Why does it matter if it was cash vs a transfer?
This wasn’t ransom, but it was bad timing from a PR perspective. The Obama administration should have insisted on spacing the two events apart.
They should have given them $2 bills and dollar coins as payment. Ha! Try and spend THAT, Iranians!
Bundles of cash has a shadier, seedy “mob-mafia ransom” or “bank job” connotation to it.
Technically the same as a transfer - but, again, bad PR.
The Iranians should have waited until the morning of Inauguration Day 2017 like last time.
Regards,
Shodan
Or we could have sold them weapons, and then used that money to fund terrorists we approved of.
Unlike Reagan, Hillary was not actively trying to undermine the diplomatic efforts of an incumbent president.
We did sell them weapons, and now the Iranians can fund terrorists that they approve of.
Regards,
Shodan
As long as they’re anti-communist, it’s okay.
I have no agenda here. I highly doubt that the US government with all of its resources and connections to many central banks could not have arranged to get Iran the money in other ways not involving cash. Laughable to think otherwise.
For the sake of argument, let’s say they could. In the words of our next president, what difference does it make?
Why does it matter if it was cash?
I hope the people who are mad about this cash transaction were even more upset about the $12 Billion in cash that we shipped to Iraq and distributed.
Wasn’t Obama getting flak for not getting the prisoners released as part of the Iran Nuclear deal?
It really seems to be a damned if you do damned if you don’t.
If they’re paid in cash they can avoid declaring it on their taxes. 
This is exactly what I was going to post. Who gives a shit what form it was in. The facts are we owed them money. They had people we wanted back, and we wanted a nuclear treaty. We did something for them (pallets of cash), they did something for us (signed treaty, gave us our people).
Is this so hard to understand? This is what diplomacy is, people, it isn’t always pretty, but backroom deals like this are how we avoid being in a god damn war all the time. Jeezus Christ, who gives a shit if it was dollars, francs, or pieces of eight?
The optics were bad, but smart people can see past how something looks and see the reality, or at least see the grown-ups dealing with the reality. Or you could look at this purely politically and twist this into something nefarious.
Yeah, probably you will just do that. :rolleyes:
Obama could have avoided all this bad publicity by just using PayPal.
No, the Iranians specified small, unmarked bills.
Regards,
Shodan