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The going rate for an American hostage these days is around $1.3 billion. That’s what the Biden administration paid out for five Americans in a prisoner swap with the Islamic Republic of Iran this week. And with little overhead, it’s mostly profit for the mullahs.
But don’t let the term “prisoner swap” insinuate that there is any moral equivalence. These are not two normal countries trading spies or combatants. No, this is just old-fashioned extortion.
The Iranians released political hostages, snatched off the streets of Tehran after unwisely returning to visit family or attending funerals or protests. Many of them were reportedly thrown into the notorious Evin Prison for the crime of having dual citizenship. Some, like Siamak Namazi, were put in solitary confinement for over two years.
Conversely, the United States released a bunch of spies, most of them caught trying to send military and nuclear equipment back to Iran — all of them given the benefit of due process.
Having a moral imperative to retrieve American citizens from these fascist regimes is admirable. Incentivizing more kidnappings is not. So, it’s one thing for the Biden administration to contend, “we did what he had to do” and quite another for them to celebrate as if they had just signed the Peace of Westphalia.
Last week, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan tweeted out a triumphant picture of the Biden team and the released hostages, writing, “seven Americans on their way home from Iran alongside a world class group of American diplomats.”
The fact that Iran, a far weaker state with little leverage, walks away with its spies and $6 billion in sanctioned cash in exchange for five innocent people does not strike me as a great diplomatic coup … at least not for the United States.
Mullahs, and others, feel quite comfortable taking American hostages, which speaks poorly of our world standing, and confoundingly of the Democrats’ soft touch with Iran. “Hey, that’s a nice military base you have there, it would be a shame if it ended up like the shredded corpse of Qasem Soleimani,” is what the vile mullahs should be hearing. The same Democrats who are gung-ho to fight proxy wars against nuclear powers will almost never utter a word that might offend the supreme leader of Iran.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, trying to manage the political fallout, contends that the United States is “working every single day to take steps to make this practice (hostage taking) more and more difficult and more and more of a burden on those countries that engage in it.” They say the same thing every time. And it is never true.
For a long time, stated U.S. policy was to never pay ransom for hostages taken by terror groups. The Justice Department objected to former President Barack Obama’s midnight cash payments to Iran because it ignored those existing guidelines. This is why Washington now uses diplomatic euphemisms like “wrongfully detained” rather than “hostage.” And the U.S. not only still considers Iran a state sponsor of terrorism but it has designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the group that reportedly seized these very people we just liberated, a terror organization.
Which is also why the White House claims that “under terms that provide confidence, the funds will be spent only on a limited category of humanitarian trade: food, medicine and agricultural products. That’s it.”
Is it, though? There is absolutely no way to ensure that the Islamofascists in Qatar, the nation “brokering” the deal, will hold their friends in Iran accountable, or that it even matters. Before all the funds were even transferred to Iranian accounts, “President” Ebrahim Raisi had told NBC News that his country would spend $6 billion “wherever we need it.” Of course, even if the mullahs bought only “food, medicine and agricultural products” with it, that specific money is, as everyone knows, fungible.
Iran boosters will tell you the ransom money is actually Iran’s to begin with — funds held by South Korea due to American sanctions. It shouldn’t be. The Iranian government, companies and officials still owe American citizens at least $53 billion in outstanding judgments. Legislation passed in 2015 granted up to $4.44 million to every American held hostage by Iran in 1981 — $10,000 per day. Then there are the families and relatives of 9/11 victims, who also won tens of millions in judgments against Iran, which not only gave safe harbor to Sunni terror groups but also helped transit al-Qaeda members out of Afghanistan before 9/11, including some of the hijackers.
Maybe we needed to make this deal, maybe not. But giving another $6 billion to a nation that attacks U.S. interests around the world, one that is responsible for the murders of hundreds of our soldiers, is nothing to brag about.
This is why I disagree with this article. You have Iranians who came to the United States seeking asylum in most cases, becoming U.S. citizens and then go home for vacations, visit relatives ,or other reasons and get arrested. I don’t feel sorry for them and I don’t believe the U.S. government should get involved in their cases. As for the six billion dollars, it’s Iranian money in U.S. bank accounts. It is not U.S. taxpayers money. That should be made perfectly clear. Most Americans don’t understand what sanction money means.
All of this could have been avoided by restricting all travel to and from Iran for all American citizens and legal residents. Not allowing any Iranians to come to the United States for any reason.
Its the same crap TV people said regarding Americans left behind in Afghanistan. It s the same situation as Iran. This is what happens when your allow third world people to come here. In most cases, they go back and get arrested and create a diplomatic problem for the U.S. I don’t feel sorry for them either.
Ah. The Iranian government held innocent passersby in solitary confinement for over two years & in squalid conditions.
That gives those prisoners so much in common with the Jan 6th patriots. Two degenerate administrators screwing over American citizens, means shithead *Biden so much in common with Iranian jihadists that hate America.
At least the retarded fool didn’t trade 5 high-ranking jihadists for a deserting piece-of-shit named Bergdahl.
(And like the exorbitant ransom FJB just handed over, those 5 jihadists that B. Hussein released also weren’t held in check – as we were told they’d be.)
Lol Zoroastrians identified me. Guess I’m gonna have to start kickout out angry Arabs from my country now. I guess Israel is too considering the body I’m in but they were first to me.
Paying Ransome will only encourage them to continue to Kidnap American Citizens its time to get back to giving them a Bloody Nose again
Joe Biden must be guilty of treason for making that “prisoner swap” with Islamic Iran, therefore providing that hostile anti –America Islamic tyranny with $ six billion.
That “prisoner swap deal” greatly favors that hostile and vicious Islamic regime of Iran, which hates with a malice-filled passion the United States.
So must so that it refers to America as “The Great Satan” and one of its main themes, which in repeats so often is “Death to the USA.”
In addition, if Biden actually feels that anything “good or of value “ will come from that atrocious “swap deal” then he’s much more of a feeble-minded fool and idiot , Biden is an treacherous treasonous villain.
Regardless of which those two descriptions best fits Biden. Either one shows that Joe Biden is an affront to the Office of the Presidency of the United States and a catastrophe for America and a disaster for the American people.
Maybe the real reason that Joe Biden has agreed to that “prisoner swap” which provides that brutal and cruel Islamic tyranny with such a terribly great amount of money is that he probably likes and even admires that America hating tyrannical Islamic regime of Iran . Therefore, that “swap deal” is just an excuse for him to further support and uphold that wicked Islamic regime.
This is as is the wise saying which is that “Evil is already looking for an excuse.”
One of the reasons that Joe Biden has policies that great favors that aggressive Islamic tyranny of Iran and grants those in power in that hostile regime everything that they demand, including the funds and materials to construct and manufacture nuclear weapons is because is because Biden actually “owes” much to that Iranian “mullah regime. “of those Muslim tyrants of Iran had actually meddled and interfered in the American presidential election by supporting the Biden bid for the Oval Office during the election year of 2020. So Biden “owe” much to that anti-America regime of Iran. Likewise, the heads of Iran have much more information about how they helped Biden obtain Office and naturally election cheating Joe Biden wouldn’t want Iran to make know all that information to the world . So of course, he gives that Islamic tyranny everything that Rasis demands
So now in the year 2022 that that “mullah regime” with their stooge and useful idiot to archive they want to obtain on their Islamic agenda.
One of the many reliable sources that will confirm this is the video documentary TRUMP CARD by Dinesh D’ Souza.