Eli Lake, Columnist

U.S. Has Taught Iran a Lesson: Hostage-Taking Pays

It started with Reagan. Now Tehran expects it can extort cash from any administration.

August 3, 2016 at 6:25 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Iran is used to getting what it wants from American presidents.
Photographer: J. DAVID AKE/AFP/Getty Images

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If Americans were detained, cash was exchanged, and Americans were released, that looks like a ransom payment, right? Using the razor of Occam.

Those are the facts as reported in extraordinary detail by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday: The U.S. arranged for the delivery of $400 million worth of cash just as Iran released four U.S. citizens.