Tangle - The Iran prisoner swap.

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

The Iran prisoner swap. On Tuesday, following two years of negotiations, five Americans freed by Iran arrived back in the United States, ending their detainment a day after they were swapped for five Iranians who were being held in the United States. The U.S. also released $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue that had been frozen in overseas accounts.You can read today's podcast here, today’s Under the Radar story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. You can also check out our latest YouTube video here.Today’s clickables: New YouTube Announcement (0:48), Quick hits (1:57), Today’s story (3:47), Right’s take (7:18), Left’s take (11:28), Isaac’s take (15:32), Daily Chatter (19:33) Listener question (20:22), Under the Radar (23:07), Numbers (23:56), Have a nice day (24:42)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul,and. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about the Iran prisoner swap. A few Americans are coming home. A few Iranians are being let out of U.S. prisons. Some money is going to be unfrozen. We're going to talk about exactly what happened and share some reactions from the left and the right about that. Before we jump in, though, a quick heads up that last Friday, I mentioned a Friday edition subscribers only newsletter that I published about Ashton Kutcher. It was a dicey piece, I think, to publish. I was nervous to publish it, but it's gotten a tremendous amount of positive feedback.

publish it, but it's gotten a tremendous amount of positive feedback. And at the encouragement of my team, we decided to turn that AWOL Friday edition into a YouTube video. So I did a presentation of the argument that I wrote on YouTube. There is now a video up online. It is about 20, 25 minutes long, but if you were not a paying subscriber and you missed it, or you were a paying subscriber and you didn't read it, or you want to hear it out loud and see how I present it, please go check it out. It's up on our YouTube channel. You can find us by going to Tangle News on YouTube. And when you're there, be sure to subscribe to the channel and like the video. And of course, feel free to share it with anybody you think might find it interesting. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to jump in today with some quick hits.

First up, the House Oversight Committee will hold its first hearing of its impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden next week, and it is expected to subpoena Hunter Biden's bank records. Biden next week and it is expected to subpoena Hunter Biden's bank records. Number two, U.S. officials say they found debris from the F-35 fighter jet that went missing on Sunday after a pilot ejected himself off the coast of South Carolina. Number three, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged that India carried out an assassination of a Sikh community member on Canadian soil in June. Canada then expelled a senior Indian diplomat in retaliation. Number four, U.S. gas prices hit an average of $3.88 per gallon, their highest level since October of 2022. And number five, House Republicans

pulled a vote on a short-term spending deal after divisions within the party left them short of the support needed to avert a government shutdown. This morning, a years-long nightmare appears to be coming to an end for five Americans imprisoned in Iran, expected to be freed in a delicate prisoner swap between bitter enemies. A prisoner exchange between the United States and Iran has been completed with five Americans on their way back to U.S. soil. The plane carrying the five former prisoners and two of their family members arrived in Qatar this morning. It took months and months of secret diplomatic talks. And here's what we know about the high stakes deal. The U.S. released six billion dollars of frozen Iranian

oil funds and let five Iranians who were facing charges for nonviolent crimes walk free. Republicans tonight are voicing concern about the money headed to Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism. headed to Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism. On Tuesday, following two years of negotiations, five Americans freed by Iran arrived back in the United States, ending their detainment a day after they were swapped for five Iranians who were being held in the United States. The United States also released $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue that has been frozen in overseas accounts. Of the prisoners returned to the U.S., three were Iranian Americans and two have not been publicly identified. All five had been charged with unsubstantiated allegations of espionage. Siamak Namazi was detained while

visiting family in Tehran in 2015 on accusations of spying and cooperating with the U.S. government. Namazi's mother was flown out of Iran with him after also having been prohibited from traveling. Ahmad Shargi moved from Iran to the United States and was arrested on spying and security-related charges. He spent eight months in prison before being cleared, but Iran banned him from travel. In 2020, he was summoned by the Revolutionary Court and sentenced to 10 years on espionage charges. He was not imprisoned, but was rearrested and sent to jail after getting caught attempting to flee in 2021. Murad Tabaz is an Iranian-American environmentalist who also has British citizenship and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for assembly and collusion against Iran's national security and contacts

with the U.S. enemy government for the purpose of spying. Like Namazi's mother, Tabaz's wife also left Iran after having previously been banned from traveling. Today, five innocent Americans who were imprisoned in Iran are finally coming home, President Biden said in a statement on Monday. As we celebrate the return of these Americans, we also remember those who did not return. I call on the Iranian regime to give a full account of what happened to Bob Levinson, he said, nodding to a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran 16 years ago. Of the five Iranians who were being held in the U.S., two of the detainees decided to return to Iran, two opted to stay in the United States, and one flew to a separate country to reunite with his

family. All five prisoners had been charged with non-violent crimes and each was granted clemency. Two were set to be released in 100 days and the other three were still awaiting trial. As part of the deal, Iran will also get access to $6 billion in funds that were being held in a restricted account in South Korea. That money was transferred to another restricted bank account in Qatar after Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed a waiver to release the money without it being impacted by U.S. sanctions. U.S. officials say Iran will only be able to use the money for humanitarian purchases like food, medicine, and agricultural products. However, some Republicans were critical of Biden for making the deal, saying it could encourage Iran to take more prisoners. Republicans also note that even

if this money is spent on humanitarian goods, it will free up money already being spent on those goods for other activities, potentially helping fund terrorism and Iran's proxy battles across the Middle East. The agreement marks a notable defrosting of Iran-U.S. relations, which have been soured since the U.S. pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. However, there has been reporting that Iran wants to return to the deal, and that the U.S. had signaled such diplomacy would not be possible while Americans remained wrongfully detained in Iran. Today, we're going to break down some reactions to the swap from the right and the left, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right is uniformly opposed to this deal, arguing that it will make America less safe. Many argue that Iran will use

the money as it pleases, and you can expect them to fund terrorism with it. Some argue the swap will encourage more hostage-taking from foreign adversaries. In National Review, Shea Katerian Andrew Galili said the deal is as bad as you would expect. The agreement requires the Islamic Republic to use the funds only for humanitarian purposes, and it entrusts Qatar to be an honest guardian of this clause. But Qatar, the Islamic Republic's fellow fundamentalist Jew-hating state sponsor of terrorism, is an untrustworthy partner, they said. Moreover, money is fungible. In fact, Ebrahim Raisi, the president of the Islamic Republic, told CNN's Lester Holt on Tuesday

that his regime will use the money as it wishes and without constraints. In comparison, during the administration of President Donald Trump, the Islamic Republic agreed to release one U.S. citizen in exchange for one of its agents. An honest journalist would ask the administration about the disparity between the two agreements and why the current administration made such greater concessions. The only two explanations are that either the current administration is far worse at diplomatic negotiations or that there are secret side agreements. The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. The New York Post editorial board said Biden just put the world on notice. It will negotiate with terrorists. That's the

takeaway from the utterly craven move to free $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds and five Iranian prisoners in return for five U.S. citizens held captive by Tehran, the board said. The American hostages released here were all innocent travelers held for years in places like Tehran's notorious Evin prison on fake charges. We're glad our hostages are coming home, but this guarantees Iran and other hostile regimes will snatch some more. It looked like a terrible deal even before the details emerged, but the jaw-dropping ransom of $1.2 billion per hostage is simply insane. Not to mention that's a gift to the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism,

the board added. Yes, the cash is meant for humanitarian purposes, but insult to injury, Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi had already said he'll ignore Biden's orders. Humanitarian means whatever the Iranian people need, so this money will be budgeted for those needs, and the needs of the Iranian people will be decided and determined by the Iranian government, he said. The money gives Tehran more breathing room as it pursues its twin aims of regional hegemony and nuclear breakout. In the Washington Examiner, Michael Rubin asked how Iran will spend its Biden billions. In 2016, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps took the money for itself as a return on the investment of the operations to seize Americans in the first place.

Money is fungible, and the ransom increased the guards' off-book operations, potentially supporting everything from efforts to finance the Houthi rebels in Yemen, to Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, to advancing Tehran's drone program, to expanding the missile program that then-Secretary of State John Kerry had legalized in order to win Iran's acquiescence to temporary enrichment restrictions, he said. Iran's president already declared he'll spend it as he sees fit. First, the regime will buy an off-the-shelf air force, and it has long sought high-end Russian fighter jets. A more dangerous prospect is that the Iranian regime,

which, according to the State Department, is still the world's greatest state sponsor of terrorism, might fund various terrorist proxy groups, Rubin said. For instance, Hamas's Hebrew University bombing that killed five Americans cost the group $50,000 to plan and execute. An ordinary suicide bomb belt, meanwhile, only cost $1,500. $6 billion flowing into Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps coffers, therefore, is enough to finance 120,000 restaurant bombings or 4 million suicide bomber belts. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left acknowledges the concessions made by the Biden administration in the deal, but largely thinks it was worth it to bring Americans home. Some suggest the U.S. is mired

in a cycle of hostage-taking by hostile nations, and the best solution would be to stop negotiating with them. Others say that both Republican and Democrat presidents have a long history of making deals like this one, but Biden is choosing to be more transparent about it now. The Washington Post editorial board said the deal continues a miserable cycle of hostage-taking. The return of the five Americans is a relief, but their release is a reminder of the nature of the Iranian government and that authoritarian regimes, with little regard for law or life, have continued to engage in state-sponsored hostage-taking, a barbaric practice that thrives on rewards and concessions from the United States and other nations,

the board wrote. The U.S. has taken pragmatic steps to save those imprisoned, but those sorts of deals reward noxious regimes and encourage more hostage-taking. The Biden administration insists the $6 billion will be dispersed for humanitarian purposes only, but these funds still represent a benefit for the economically strapped Iranian regime. It will undoubtedly free up other funds to spend on more nefarious purposes, such as buying weapons. This episode highlights the harsh truth, is that rewarding hostage-taking breeds more of the same. Rogue states clang the jail doors shut and wait for the next payoff, and they almost

never suffer consequences for stealing people off the street. The best deterrent would be for the United States and other nations to refuse to negotiate for the release of such hostages. In CNN, Peter Bergen said the high price of the deal was worth it. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,

and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Thank you. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Republican leaders like Mike Pence have criticized the Biden administration for the swap. But Pence's critique of the Biden administration ignores the fact that the $6 billion of Iranian funds belongs to Iran for its overseas oil sales. And the funds that are being unfrozen will not go to Iran but to Qatar, where the Qatari government will administer them to be used only for humanitarian purposes in Iran, Bergen said. One can argue that this indirectly helps the Iranian government, yet who it really helps is the Iranian people, who have suffered through decades of incompetent government by the Ayatollahs. Since the highest responsibility of the U.S. commander-in-chief is the protection of American citizens, Biden was right to approve the

Iran deal. Still, the publicity around these kinds of prisoner swaps must surely act as a deterrent for Americans with any plans to travel to countries like Iran. And in the future, it would seem a sensible policy prescription that travel websites echo the U.S. government's warning that any American who has plans to go to countries such as Iran, Russia, or Venezuela would be taking a real risk of being wrongfully detained. In MAC News, Dan DeLucci and Abigail Williams noted that the United States has always made prisoner swap deals like this one, but now we're just being honest about it. Biden is not the first U.S. president to make concessions to hostage takers and to face political heat back home for his decision.

What's different this time is that Biden and his team are making no secret of the link between the funds unblocked for Iran and the freedom of five imprisoned Americans, explicitly acknowledging the trade-off, they said. A number of U.S. officials involved in the deal were also part of a similar agreement with Iran during the Obama presidency, but this time the rhetoric is less evasive. Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, agreed to prisoner swaps with Iran involving Iranian nationals prosecuted in U.S. courts and held a summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong-un in 2018 after three detained Americans were released. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan's administration secretly sold weapons to Iran to try to win the release of Americans held by Iranian-backed proxies in Lebanon,

a scheme that Reagan initially denied but later apologized for. Previous presidents from both parties have made uncomfortable trade-offs to get Americans out of captivity. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So when President Biden secured the release of WNBA star Brittany Griner, I wrote that he made the right bad deal and that it was still an abject failure that he only got Brittany Griner home from Russia in exchange for a notorious arms dealer. We could celebrate Griner's return while also admitting it was not a win-win. We did not come out stronger or safer, and I said then that the deal increased the likelihood of this kind of thing happening

more often. And now we have this. There is no good way to end a hostage situation with a foreign adversary like Iran. Imagine being in the shoes of the State Department or the White House. You have the desperate family and friends of someone locked in a notoriously awful prison in Iran on trumped-up charges begging you to do something, anything, to secure their release. You have pressure from the media and the pundits who talk about these prisoners being left behind by your administration. You have the injustice of their imprisonment hanging over you. All the pressure right there in your face. I can't say confidently I know what I would do, but I'd certainly explore every possible option to get someone home. The Biden administration spent two years negotiating this deal. My presumption is that they did everything they

could to make it happen while also minimizing the risk to Americans or our allies like Israel. In the Griner case, there was a real question about the risk of releasing Victor Bout, an infamous international arms dealer who some experts believe was no longer a threat. In this case, the prisoners we released were non-violent and, best I can tell, not particularly worrisome to us. It seems like a couple might simply stay in the United States and were set to be released in a couple of months anyway. If it were just that, it'd be a no-brainer, which means the real heart of this deal is the money. We can't really put a monetary value on life, let alone five, but

the right's argument about sending Iran $6 billion rings true. Money is fungible. Any dollar Iran gets in this deal frees up a dollar to do whatever they want, including fund terrorism, and Iran's president has made it clear he does not view this money as coming with any strings attached. At the same time, it's also true that this is Iran's money. We froze it, sure, but it wasn't sitting in U.S. bank accounts. It isn't a ransom payment coming from the United States. We freeze money and impose sanctions like this on countries like Iran when we view their actions, like unjustly imprisoning people, as intolerable or violating international law. So it's logical that we might unfreeze that money when they reverse course,

when prisoners are released or they make some show of good faith. It's natural to immediately go to the worst case scenarios in situations like this. This money goes to Iran, Iran turns around and dumps millions or even billions into its proxy wars and terrorist organizations, and Americans or our allies die because of what we did. But there's also the best case scenario here. This $6 billion is genuinely helpful for the millions of people living under an oppressive authoritarian regime in Iran, and the money does actually go mostly or entirely to humanitarian needs like medicine and food. If that were to happen while we defrost some relations with Iran and open diplomatic channels to get more Americans home, all without an uptick in their proxy activity or terrorism, which has been pretty quiet recently, then this would have definitely

been worth it. Do I think the best case scenario is more likely than the worst case scenario? No, I don't. Which is why the exchange of this much money is tough to swallow. But I can't see the future. I'm hard-pressed to confidently say what will come of this trade. For now, just like with Greiner, we can celebrate these Americans coming home while also being concerned about what all this means, not just in terms of what Iran does with the money, but also with the signal it sends to other adversaries. It's one of those moments where I'm happy to be an armchair quarterback rather than the one making these decisions. All right, that is it for my take. A quick reminder, if you're interested in international news, given our coverage today, I wanted to remind you that we have a partnership with Daily Chatter,

a newsletter that exclusively covers international news. They promote Tangle to their readers, and once a week we promote Daily Chatter in our newsletter. I sometimes give a reminder in the podcast, so I wanted to do that today. I read their newsletter every morning. It is a nice compliment to Tangle if you want to just keep up with international and U.S. news. And there is a reference link through us in today's episode description and in today's newsletter if you want to go check out Daily Chatter and become a subscriber. You can also just go Google them and subscribe there. And if you do, be sure to tell them that we sent you. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Arez in Mountain Lakes,

Jersey. Arez said Vivek Ramaswamy has made what sounds like some good points about the abuse of the Espionage Act over many decades. What's your take on this and on the Espionage Act in general? I think he's right. Let me share two quotes with you about the Espionage Act that I think offer some strong criticism. This is the first one, quote, a relic of World War I when the government sought to stifle anti-war dissent, the law is so vague and yet so draconian that it has become a handy weapon for federal prosecutors to use against a wide array of targets, often individuals considered politically dangerous by mainstream America. The second quote goes like this, the law criminalized not only spying for enemies, but also any attempt to encourage disloyalty among military ranks.

Prosecutors enforced the act aggressively, using it to imprison hundreds of anti-war activists and political dissenters. The socialist former presidential candidate Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison in part for denouncing the Espionage Act itself. The second quote is from Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's June 2023 editorial in the right-leaning Wall Street Journal, which you link to in your question. The first quote, however, is from a James Risen piece in The Intercept, which was published in 2022 in support of an effort to amend the Espionage Act by Rashida Tlaib, a member of the S.Q.U.A.D., the Progressive Four-Woman Caucus in the House. Each author was attacking the same law from different sides at different times and for different reasons, and I think they're both

right. Both Ramaswamy's editorial and Risen's article convincingly detail the ways in which the Espionage Act has been used selectively to silence political opponents and protect powerful government interests in the past. Risen advanced his argument in defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, while in his editorial, Ramaswamy said its usage in the classified documents case to prosecute former President Donald Trump indicated that special counsel Jack Smith's indictment is a political cudgel. We shared a similar argument from the Wall Street Journal in our coverage of Trump's indictment in this case in July. I don't think whether or not

Trump is found guilty in that case on the mishandling of classified documents depends solely on the application of the Espionage Act, and the foundations of the classified documents indictment don't strike me as political persecution. But regardless of how that case progresses, I think Congress should revisit and curtail the reach and scope of the Espionage Act. It's a dated law that is too broadly written and too widely applied to be more useful than dangerous, and I think critics on both sides of the aisle make that case convincingly. All right, next up is our under the radar section. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that he'd be rolling out automatic voter registration in the state. Now, eligible

voters getting a new driver's license ID card in Pennsylvania will be automatically registered to vote. The move makes Pennsylvania the 24th state to implement automatic voter registration. Previously, voters in Pennsylvania were given an option to register while getting their license and then asked a series of 19 questions during screening. Now they will automatically be taken through 11 questions during the ID process and then added to the voter rolls. The new process is expected to add tens of thousands of voters to the voter rolls in one of 2024's most critical swing states. ABC News has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description.

All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who say they support the U.S. engaging in prisoner exchanges generally, according to a 2022 YouGov poll taken after Brittany Griner was released, is 52%. The percentage who said they supported Griner being released in exchange for Victor Bout was just 38%. The percentage who said they strongly or somewhat disapproved of Griner being released in exchange for Victor Bout was 47%. The percentage who said they weren't sure is 16%. The percentage of voters who said they support the Republican impeachment inquiry into Biden, according to a new Morning Consult poll, is 48%. And the percentage of voters who said they oppose the Republican impeachment inquiry is 42%.

All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day section. Joan Potters collects fabric scraps left over from the Greater San Antonio Quilting Guild, filling her makeshift workshop with colorless swatches. Potters 93 uses the fabric to make dog beds for animal shelters in her area, like the San Antonio Humane Society and the Paul Jolly Center for Pet Adoptions. And all the effort does not come from just Potters. His missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will occasionally help her with the sewing, delivering around 30 to 40 beds to dog shelters each month.

I just am happy to do it for them and to know that some dog is going to be comfortable, Potter said. It makes me feel good to know that they're not going to be laying on cement or a hard floor or in the winter. KSAT has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and consider becoming a member. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Law. Our script is edited by Ari Peace. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.