I would love to know more about this, but haven’t yet found anything.
He says Obama took the seats out of a Boeing 757 and filled it with cash to send to Iran.
That………………….doesn’t sound very plausible. I haven’t been able to find anything that even resembles it.
Apparently, Obama did actually send three military cargo plane shipments — not a Boeing 757 with seats removed — filled with 1.3 Billion dollars in physical cash to Iran — “wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies”, according to the WSJ.
It was apparently part of a deal to release some hostages. The Obama Administration explained as a repayment of an old debt from the 1970s, relating to an arms deal. The Republicans called it ransom.
Why? Why cash?
I mean, sure: Iran is frozen out of a lot of banking, but it is (and was) still a part of the world economy, as any oil seller would be. So even if there were legal reasons why a direct transfer could not be made by pressing a button at the Treasury – and wouldn’t those reasons on any plausible interpretation of the law extend to cash? But I digress – then it would not be beyond the wit of man to make use of an intermediary trusted by both parties: Switzerland, or Qatar, say.
Washington presses a button and the numbers on its screen change; so do the numbers on screens in Zürich and Doha; and a few minutes later they change again in Zürich, Doha, and Tehran.
Or if you want something tangible, why not write a cheque?
Cash is so very mediaeval. It’s like everyone believed that the value of money lies in the physical reality of the token. A gold standard, but with paper rather than gold as the desirable commodity.
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