WASHINGTON _ The U.S. withheld a $400 million cash payment to Iran earlier this year as leverage to ensure that American prisoners would be released as the country had promised, State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.
"We were able to conclude multiple strands of diplomacy within a 24-hour period," Kirby told reporters in Washington. "We deliberately leveraged that moment."
Kirby was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. wouldn't let Iran take control of the money _ which the country was owed as part of a $1.7 billion settlement over a long-running dispute _ until a plane carrying the American prisoners had left Iran in January.
Disputes over the timing of the payment have fueled criticism of the administration's nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. While the U.S. has said talks over the release of the prisoners were held separately from last year's negotiations on the payment and the nuclear deal, Kirby's comments represented an acknowledgment that those two matters eventually converged.
