House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) recently said that the Obama administration’s $1.7 billion cash payment to Iran that coincided with the release of American prisoners undermines U.S. national security, and that he is confident that his bill to ban such payments in the future will pass the full House.
The legislation authored by Royce, the Prohibiting Future Ransom Payments to Iran Act, H.R. 5931, has drawn 44 Republican co-sponsors. The Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to meet on Wednesday to consider the bill that states that the administration violated longstanding U.S. policy by releasing prisoners and paying ransom for the return of Americans held hostage by Iran.
“We are sending the world’s leading state sponsor of terror pallets of untraceable cash. And that is not just terrible policy. It is incredibly reckless,” Royce told the Ripon Advance in a recent interview. “It is reckless because it only puts bigger targets on the backs of Americans.”
In addition to prohibiting all cash payments to Iran, the bill demands transparency on future settlements and would require the president give Congress 30-days notice before the United States conducts any transaction with Iran in connection with an agreement to settle legal claims between the two countries through a tribunal set up in The Hague, Netherlands.
“We had some 30 briefings on Iran and never was this issue of cash transfers ever divulged to Congress,” Royce said. “This bill has a clear focus on transparency. We should not be kept in the dark and we have already shown that we need to prohibit outright any more cash transfers to the regime.”
The Obama administration organized the cash payments to Iran to settle a dispute over an aborted military equipment sale from the 1970s.
First reported by the Wall Street Journal, an initial $400 million payment was made to Iran in January, described as wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies delivered by plane, and coincided with the release of four Americans detained in Tehran. The remainder of the $1.7 billion payment was also made in cash in subsequent days.
The administration said that there was no connection between the payment and the release of the American prisoners, but a U.S. State Department spokesman later acknowledged the payment had been used as “leverage” to ensure the release of the Americans.
The perception that the United States paid a ransom in cash heightened concerns that Iran would be incentivized to continue taking hostages and funding terrorist activities. Since the payment, several other Americans traveling in Iran have been abducted.
Iran is in the process of funding terrorism in the region, Royce said.
“The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp. has funded the transfer of 100,000 rockets and missiles into the hands of Hezbollah,” Royce said, adding that some of the missiles under development are intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Royce added that the House legislation would prohibit the United States from making any payment to Iran in cash, including payment for the purchase of Iran’s heavy water, a component in the manufacturing of nuclear weapons and energy. Royce said that the administration has not told Congress whether those types of payments were transacted in cash.
The Senate introduced a similar bill under U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) that would prohibit the federal government from paying ransom. It would also stop payments to Iran from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund until Iran returns money it received and pays American victims of Iranian terrorism what they are owed.