Somebody’s fibbing
The White House should get its stories straight on the four hostages being held in Iran.
President Barack Obama, answering a question by CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett last week, said negotiators intentionally did not tie the release of the hostages to the Middle East country’s nuclear program.
“Think about the logic that that creates,” the president said. “Suddenly, Iran realizes, you know what, maybe we can get additional concessions out of the Americans by holding these individuals – makes it much more difficult for us to walk away if Iran somehow thinks that a nuclear deal is dependent in some fashion on the nuclear deal. And by the way, if we had walked away from the nuclear deal, we’d still be pushing them just as hard to get these folks out. That’s why those issues are not connected, but we are working every single day to try to get them out and won’t stop until they’re out and rejoined with their families.”
Secretary of State John Kerry, apparently not on the same page with the president, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” there was “not one meeting that took place” during the talks at which the United States did not raise the issue of the hostages. In fact, he said, it even was raised at the last meeting with Iranian officials before the deal was announced.