{"id":184834,"date":"2021-03-01T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T18:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=184834"},"modified":"2021-03-01T13:00:23","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T18:00:23","slug":"former-iranian-hostage-says-obama-payments-to-iran-led-to-his-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/former-iranian-hostage-says-obama-payments-to-iran-led-to-his-arrest\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Iranian Hostage Says Obama Payments to Iran Led to His Arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fformer-iranian-hostage-says-obama-payments-to-iran-led-to-his-arrest%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=184834&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/rsz_gettyimages-1230548080.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>A former Iranian hostage who was wrongly imprisoned in the country for three years said the Obama administration&#8217;s decision to pay Iran $1.7 billion in cash encouraged the hardline regime to abduct him.<\/p>\n<p>Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-American academic who was freed in 2019 by the Trump administration, said in a recent interview that Iran viewed the Obama administration&#8217;s 2016 decision to send the country nearly $2 billion in cash as a signal\u00a0that hostage-taking could lead to sanctions relief.\u00a0 Wang was arrested by the Iranians in 2016, shortly after the Obama administration airlifted the $1.7 billion as part of a deal that saw other American hostages released from Iranian custody. The United States maintained the cash was not sent as part of a prisoner swap, but to cover the costs of a decades-old legal proceeding between the two countries.<\/p>\n<div class=\"posts-content__category-widget md:hidden -ml-4 -mr-4 my-8 px-4 py-6 bg-gray-100\">\n<h4 class=\"mt-0 text-red-600 font-medium font-sans uppercase\">Recent Stories in National Security<\/h4>\n<ul class=\"list-none p-0\">\n<li class><a class=\"text-black block mb-3 pb-3 border-b border-white\" href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/national-security\/former-iranian-hostage-says-obama-payments-to-iran-led-to-his-arrest\/\"><strong>Former Iranian Hostage Says Obama Payments to Iran Led to His Arrest<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li class><a class=\"text-black block mb-3 pb-3 border-b border-white\" href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/national-security\/biden-state-department-nominee-is-a-defender-of-china-propaganda-program\/\"><strong>Biden State Department Nominee Is a Defender of China Propaganda Program<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li class><a class=\"text-black block mb-3 pb-3 border-b border-white\" href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/national-security\/house-republicans-press-biden-to-get-tough-on-cuba\/\"><strong>House Republicans Press Biden to Get Tough on Cuba<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>&#8220;Iran saw it as a ransom payment, and they talk about it in the media in the open,&#8221; Wang told American Enterprise Institute scholar Danielle Pletka in <a href=\"https:\/\/thedispatch.com\/p\/they-wasted-away-four-years-of-my\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an interview<\/a> published last week. &#8220;It really doesn&#8217;t matter how Obama and his administration saw it. It was perceived by Iran as ransom, clearly. It is not even an inference. It&#8217;s their explicit statement. The moral of this is make America pay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Wang&#8217;s comments shed new light on the former Democratic administration&#8217;s dealings with Iran at a time when the Biden White House is pursuing direct diplomacy with the Islamic Republic in hopes of securing a revamped nuclear agreement. <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/national-security\/obama-admin-paid-iran-1-7-billion-taxpayer-funds\/\">The <em>Washington Free Beacon<\/em> reported<\/a> in early 2016 that the $1.7 billion payment was paid, in part, to secure the release of five Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran. Wang&#8217;s comments support that claim and indicate that Iran will continue to seize Americans in order to pressure the United States into making similar payments.<\/p>\n<p>Wang said that after he read reports about the $1.7 billion payment, first published in the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>, &#8220;I felt, \u2018Oh shoot, they are going to arrest me, because clearly they want to take me for ransom.'&#8221; He was detained by Iranian authorities shortly after.<\/p>\n<p>The Obama administration&#8217;s payment, which was conducted in all cash, was pulled from a U.S. taxpayer fund controlled by the Justice Department. Under the terms of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/uncategorized\/iran-u-s-bought-freedom-citizens-1-7-billion-cash-release\/\">deal<\/a>, Iran was paid $400 million to settle a legal dispute over arms sales, plus an additional $1.3 billion in interest from the taxpayer fund.<\/p>\n<div class=\"my-8 hide-print\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1526555381173-4\" class=\"mobile-250 desktop-90\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A former Iranian hostage who was wrongly imprisoned in the country for three years said the Obama administration&#8217;s decision to pay Iran $1.7 billion in cash encouraged the hardline regime &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2274464,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/rsz_gettyimages-1230548080.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Former Iranian Hostage Says Obama Payments to Iran Led to His Arrest","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/rsz_gettyimages-1230548080.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Former Iranian Hostage Says Obama Payments to Iran Led to His Arrest","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2274464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}