White House: Iran Can’t Use Swap Money How They Want, ‘Plausible’ They’re Using This to Play to Domestic Audience

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby reacted to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s vow that Iran will spend the $6 billion it will gain access to from a prisoner swap with the United States however it feels by stating that the claim isn’t true and it’s “perfectly plausible” that Raisi was “playing to his domestic audience there in Iran.”

Kirby said, “No, that’s not true. The system is set up such that this money — these funds can only be parceled out for humanitarian purposes, food, medicine, construction of medical facilities, or even educational purposes, but that each and every withdrawal is going to go through a series of checks and balances. Checks by the Treasury Department, checks by the Qatari National Bank, and, quite frankly, there’ll be a check on what they can withdraw based on aid organizations and whatever companies need to be contracted to help deliver these goods or these resources into Iran. So, everything will be parceled out based on need. We will have visibility and oversight over each of those withdrawal requests. And if we don’t approve it, it won’t get approved for delivery to Iran. So, this is not a blank check for them. It is very much going to be monitored. And there will be quite a bit of oversight before any dollars — not dollars, any money can be spent.”

Host Andrea Mitchell then asked why Raisi said what he did.

Kirby responded, “Difficult to know what was in his head when he was talking to Lester. I heard the speculation before I came on with you that it might be that he was playing to his domestic audience there in Iran. That’s a perfectly plausible explanation. But the parameters of this arrangement, Andrea, are very clear, very concise. And the Iranians have signed up [for] this. So, there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind how this going to work. And, again, I think it’s important to remember, this is not U.S. taxpayer dollars, this is not ransom. These were Iranian funds that had been frozen in a South Korean account that they did not have access to. All we’re simply doing is moving this money to Qatar, to Qatari National Bank, so that it can be accessible to them for, again, very discreet, targeted purposes.”

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