FNC’s Peters: $400 Million Payment To Iran ‘Definitely a Ransom’

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Fox News Strategic Analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret.) said the payment of $400 million to Iran as four Americans were released from the country back in January was “definitely a ransom, or a bribe, if you prefer to call it that.”

Peters said, “On some pathetic level, Elizabeth, I have to feel sorry for [State Department Spokesperson, retired Rear Admiral] John Kirby. I mean, his job is to convince us that sewage is champagne. Well, drink it if you want to. But there’s no question in my mind — I’ve been around Washington a long time, too long perhaps. This was definitely a ransom, or a bribe, if you prefer to call it that. And I can even tell you how it happened. It’s the same thing as when you walk into a car dealership, and you haggle with the car dealer, and finally you think — the salesman — you’ve agreed on a price, and the salesman disappears into the back room, and you’re excited about that car, and the contract comes out, and it’s $800 higher than you agreed on, and he says, oh, that’s just a dealer prep charge. And, if you’re a fool, as [Secretary of State] John Kerry was with the Iranians, you agree to the higher charge. It was clearly a sweetener to get the deal through, and to get the Iranian Americans released. And the problem is, Elizabeth, that, we did pay ransom. That’s how it looks to the rest of the world. It encourages people to take more Americans prisoner, as the Iranians already have done. They’ve got two, possibly a third right now. And it makes it very hard for to us take the moral high ground with our allies, like the French, and say, you shouldn’t pay ransoms. I mean, it just plain stinks.”

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