Menendez voices ‘concerns’ about $6 billion US-Iran prisoner swap

Menendez voices ‘concerns’ about $6 billion US-Iran prisoner swap

THE HILL- Sept 12th 2023

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) expressed concerns Monday amid reports that the Biden administration agreed to unfreeze $6 billion for Iran in exhange for five U.S. prisoners.

Menendez said “one of the concerns” about negotiating for the release of American prisoners unjustly detained by foreign adversaries is that it encourages hostile nations to take more Americans hostage in the future.

“This is an example of why we have to go ahead and make it very clear to Americans that they cannot travel to certain places in the world where they are likely to ultimately become a hostage. Until we do that we will constantly be in a set of circumstances” where the United States faces negotiations to free detained Americans, Menendez told reporters Monday.

He said he doesn’t think Congress will vote on the deal and declined to say how he would vote if it came to the Senate floor.

“We’ll see if it comes to the floor; I don’t think it will,” Menendez said.

Asked about Republican criticism that the Biden administration is creating incentives for more hostage taking by allowing $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds to move from South Korea to Qatar, Menendez said, “This is one of the concerns.”

Senate Republicans excoriated the deal, which also includes the release of five Iranian prisoners.

“First Joe Biden used 9/11 as an excuse to flee Afghanistan. Now he desecrates this day by paying ransom to the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism. Shameful,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a statement Monday.

Other Republican lawmakers warned that rewarding Iran would only set the stage for future detentions of Americans traveling abroad.

“If we’re paying a billion dollars per kidnapped individual, then you’re going to see more kidnappings. That’s why you don’t negotiate with terrorists; that’s why you don’t negotiate with kidnappers. The idea of basically paying to release, in this effect, a hostage is a terrible idea,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said.

“Remember back in the Reagan years, we had — was it — guns for hostages, that was the story, remember that? This is a billion dollars for a hostage,” Romney said.