Like so many other uninformed right-wing commentators, Glenn Beck is predictably outraged by a report that the United States sent $400 million in cash to Iran earlier this year, declaring on his radio program today that this transfer is “much worse“ than the Iran-Contra scandal and that President Obama and Hillary Clinton will now have blood on their hands if any of that money is used to finance terrorist operations.
As we noted yesterday, this transfer was announced by the State Department back in January and openly reported on at the time and stemmed from the settlement of a dispute between the U.S. and Iran over undelivered weapons dating back to 1979. But conservative commentators don’t care about the basic facts of the matter and are, instead, falsely claiming that the transfer was a ransom paid by the U.S. for the release of several American hostages being held by Iran.
Beck is convinced that this payment was made in cash so as to make it “untraceable” so that it can be used by Iran to finance Islamic terrorism around the world, thereby making it far worse than the Iran-Contra scandal.
Iran-Contra may have been illegal, Beck said, but it was carried out to further American interests and was therefore “a very pro-American thing to do,” whereas “this is the president breaking the law, giving our tax dollars, $400 million in cash, to a terrorist state.”
“Terrorism that is sponsored by Iran will be on the hands of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton because they’re paying for it,” Beck declared, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Clinton left the State Department back in 2013, three years before this payment was made. “Any time there is a terrorist you can trace back to Iran who is walking around with money in his pocket, you can thank Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Period!”
