Washington, D.C. – This morning on Fox News Channel’s “American’s Newsroom,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) discussed the Obama administration’s $400 million cash payment airlifted to Iran the same day Iran released American prisoners. Video and key excerpts below.

Capture2The payment sets a terrible precedent: “[T]he worry was that if we paid this ransom, other Americans would be detained. And now we have three more Americans that are being held by the Iranians, as well as a Canadian and two Europeans. And again, the families of those victims now say, we suspect they want another prisoner swap or they want cash.”

It’s clear the $400 million won’t be used for peaceful purposes: “I can guarantee the money’s not going for infrastructure, as the administration asserted. Where do you think the money goes when you give them unmarked bills and they’re the number one sponsor of terrorism in the region and Hezbollah has all of this new inventory and cash coming in from Iran? Of course we know where it’s going…That’s how they pay Hezbollah. That’s how they pay their fighters…”

This makes an unstable region even more unstable: “[T]his administration has bent over backwards to accommodate Iran under this idea that they’re going to change their behavior. They’re making their behavior worse.”

###