Rouhani: Obama ‘Conducting Conversations’ to Send More Money to Iran

The president of Iran, state-sponsor of terrorism, has said he is expecting more money from the United States in addition to the $1.7 billion in cash that President Barack Obama has already paid the Shiite Islamic Republic as part of his nuclear deal.

“There are still considerable sums of money in the United States that belong to our nation. And we’re currently conducting conversations and various dialogues in order to return this money to Iran. Some things that we could not agree upon, there are ways to address those in the international court system,” Shiite Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani told NBC News’s Chuck Todd in an exclusive interview.

“In other words, these are the monies belonging to the Iranian nation, left in the United States for 38 years and must be returned to its rightful owner,” he added later.

The Iranian leader did not provide a specific amount of how much additional money he believes Iran is still owed from the U.S.

Rouhani’s comments came when NBC News asked about the cash payment of $1.7 billion President Obama has awarded Iran as part of a nuclear deal settlement.

ABC News suggested the Obama administration has admitted that $400 million of that money was paid as ransom for four American hostages who were released by Iran on the same day the funds were tendered in cash, saying, “the cash was used as leverage until the Americans were allowed to leave Iran.”

The $1.7 billion, which included $1.3 billion in interest allegedly owed to Iran, was believed to satisfy a settlement that was reached between Iran and the Obama administration after years of negotiations.

Nevertheless, the president of Iran, which is known to fund the Shiite narco-terrorist group Hezbollah among other forms of terror, is saying his country is currently negotiating acquiring more money from the United States.

NBC News asked Rouhani if he believed the Obama administration paid the cash money as ransom for the release of the American citizens.

Although the Iranian president did not explicitly answer the question, he indicated the release of the American detainees were part of a prisoner swap.

He said:

Now, vis-à-vis the imprisonment of those Iranians or those Iranians who are imprisoned in the United States, or were being prosecuted by the United States, or the same for those who were being held in Iran with dual citizenship. So we worked quite hard in order to have a concerted effort to free those from both sides. Both the Iranians who were being held or prosecuted in the United States, as well as those who were sentenced in Iran and had served some of their prison terms. And they were pardoned for the remainder of their prison term.