Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) likened the Obama administration to a "drug cartel" on Fox News Sunday over its cash payment of $400 million to Iran in January that has been criticized as paying a ransom.
The cash payment was secretly organized by the administration and coincided with the release of four American hostages held by the Islamic Republic, according to the Wall Street Journal. While the White House claims it was part of a $1.7 billion settlement of a failed 1979 arms deal, critics have charged the payment, made in wooden pallets on an unmarked cargo plane, was effectively a ransom and a violation of bedrock American foreign policy.
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, noting the $1.7 billion deal was publicly announced last January, asked Cotton, a fierce opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, why he was upset about the $400 million payment.
"At the time, I said that that $1.7 billion payment was a ransom itself, but the administration has consistently stonewalled Congress and the American people," Cotton said. "We didn't know the cash payment, for instance. We didn't know that it was paid for with bills that can be easily laundered and used for terrorism or support for Iran's allies throughout the region."
Cotton also pointed out that top Department of Justice officials opposed the cash payment because of the timing, saying Iran would construe it as a ransom with the release of the four hostages the same day.
"I think it's really shocking to most Americans that the United States government was acting like a drug cartel or a third-world gun runner might, stacking cash in a pallet and wrapping it in cellophane and flying it in an unmarked aircraft to give to the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism," he said. "There's still a lot of questions left to be answered, and the Obama administration continues to stonewall on this."