Tehran, Iran, August 8
By Mehdi Sepahvand –- Trend:
A recent payment of $400 million by the US government to the Islamic Republic of Iran has turned into a hot issue of debate especially in the US in recent days.
Controversy rose in the US after Iran released a video which claimed the US paid Iran $400 million on January 17, the day when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, the official name of the Iran nuclear deal) was put into action by Iran and the group 5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany).
Critics of the US administration called the payment a ransom, saying it was related to a hostage exchange that also took place on the same day. Presidential candidate Donald Trump said the “video and that the tapes were handed over by Iran to embarrass the US.”
The prisoner exchange comprised of Iran handing over four American or double-nationality people arrested by the Revolutionary Guards under charges such as espionage, and on the other side the US freeing seven Iranians it had captured on charges of having violated the nuclear-related sanctions to help Iran carry out its nuclear program.
However, the Islamic Republic says the payment related to another issue. On August 8, Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said it was a refund for a failed military deal.
“The payment’s coincidence with the conclusion of the nuclear deal was completely accidental,” Shamkhani said.
In the late 1970s Iran paid $400 million for US fighter jets, while Tehran was still a US ally. After Iran turned into an enemy of the US in 1979, Washington was not about to deliver the jets. But, all these years later, Iran wanted its money back—and with interest, which according to the deal amounts to $1.71 billion by now.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also said in an earlier statement that the payment, the JCPOA implementation, and the hostage exchange coincided “quite accidentally.”
In the US, media outlets supportive of the Obama administration have made similar remarks about the payment.
Against the backdrop of what critics and defendants have said, there can be a third interpretation of the whole events that went on between Tehran and Washington on that January 17.
Neither the prisoner swap nor the payment were any part of the JCPOA as was announced on the Implementation Day. But they all point to a spirit of cooperation between the Iranian and American administrations_ expressed suprasegmentally, however_ for mutual gain.
On one side, Iran had had enough of sanctions and needed a monetary relief badly enough to consider some “heroic flexibility” as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had said during the nuclear negotiations.
On the other, the Obama administration needed some victory for its party a year ahead of US presidential elections, considering the fact that many of its programs had failed as badly as Obamacare had.
More indicative of the spirit of cooperation between the US administration and Tehran was the measures that followed the arrest of some US sailors as a couple of US Navy river boats strayed into Iranian waters just a few days ahead of the mysterious January 17. The sailors were set free in the course of only one day after their arrest on January 12. The swift release came as a surprise as in a similar incident, Iranian military forces had seized 15 Royal Navy personnel in 2007 and held them for 13 days, not to mention the famous Iran hostage crisis, in which 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days (November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981) as Iran held charges of espionage against the US Embassy personnel.
So, the synchronicity among the JCPOA implementation, the prisoner swap, and the payment might not have been entirely an incident, but part of “trust-building” measures undertaken by Tehran and Washington, something both parties had frequently stressed during the nuclear talks that also included first-in-four-decades direct negotiations between the US and Iran.
Mehdi Sepahvand is Trend Agency’s Tehran-based correspondent
Follow him on Twitter: @mehdisepahvand