Iran Demands “Many Billions” In New Hostage Ransoms

BY CounterJihad · @CounterjihadUS | October 21, 2016

In what ought to be the least surprising news story of all time, the Washington Free Beacon reports that Iran is seeking “many billions” in new ransom payments from the Obama administration. After all, the last time they shook that tree giant pallets of cash fell out.

Future payments to Iran could reach as much as $2 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter, who said that Iran is detaining U.S. citizens in Iran’s notorious Evin prison where inmates are routinely tortured and abused.

Iranian news sources close to the country’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which has been handling prisoner swaps with the United States, reported on Tuesday that Iran expects “many billions of dollars to release” those U.S. citizens still being detained.”…

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told NBC News in late September that his government is in talks with the United States to secure future payouts, a disclosure that may have played a role in the White House’s recent decision to veto legislation to block future ransom payments to Iran.

Back when the news of the $1.7 billion cash payment to Iran for hostages was new, CounterJihad pointed out that this effect was completely predictable.

Iran’s hostage-taking response to the payoff is not some unexpected event, but the most obvious of likely consequences. Rudyard Kipling warned us. Even this most basic lesson has somehow been ignored by the geniuses who lead the Obama administration.

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: —
“We invaded you last night–we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: —
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: —

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!”

The Obama administration could indeed benefit from some remedial reading of Kipling. When they are done learning the lesson of this poem, they ought also to consider “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” It is a similar lesson in basic truths about life that, for more than a hundred years, progressive men of Obama’s class and education have refused to learn in spite of uniformly disastrous and bloody results, the sort of results we are now seeing in Syria and western Iraq, and not only there but as far away as the Philippines.

But it is hard to learn lessons when you are still busying your brain with lying about the facts. We were told that the payment was not a ransom. That was a lie when they told it to us, and it was a lie when they told it to Congress — as they later had to admit.

The seizure of new hostages began immediately upon the realization that the cash payments were for real. Senator Marco Rubio’s editorial earlier this week makes some mention of the way in which the Administration endangered the lives of Americans and those with ties to America by paying out this cash. What the Senator didn’t mention is that the President knew perfectly well that it was dangerous. Obama said so himself on another occasion.

I am reaffirming that the United States government will not make concessions, such as paying ransom, to terrorist groups holding American hostages… As President, I also have to consider our larger national security. I firmly believe that the United States government paying ransom to terrorists risks endangering more Americans and funding the very terrorism that we’re trying to stop. And so I firmly believe that our policy ultimately puts fewer Americans at risk.

Emphasis added.

No good sense has been exercised by the administration in this entire matter. Yet as the Free Beacon article notes, they will not learn. They have vetoed restrictions on future ransom payments, sending a further message to the Iranian leadership that such payments are a possibility. They thus have every reason to continue to pursue more American hostages, every reason to hope for another payment in pallets of untraceable cash.

Of course, this will only cause the cycle to repeat. Once you have paid the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.