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| President Obama |
President Barack Obama went on an extended rant on Thursday about a story that detailed the transfer of $400 million in cash to Iran the same day four American hostages were freed from the country.
"What we have is the manufacturing of outrage in a story that we disclosed in January," Obama said at a Pentagon news conference. "And the only bit of news that is relevant on this is the fact that we paid cash."
The Wall Street Journal described the transfer in a story earlier this week. The cash — euros, Swiss francs, and other currencies — was airlifted to Tehran on a cargo plane amid a prisoner swap in January in which seven Iranians detained in the US were exchanged for Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and three other Iranian-American prisoners.
The payment was part of a decades-old dispute over money that Iran sent to the US to buy weapons that it never received.
Business Insider reports Obama said that the US had previously disclosed the $400 million payment to Iran and argued that the reason the payment was made in cash was because of existing sanctions in place against Iran.
"It's now been well over a year since the agreement with Iran to stop its nuclear program was signed," Obama said. "And by all accounts, it has worked exactly the way we said it was going to work."
He then railed against those who criticized the deal and thought that it wasn't going to work.
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