The White House has tried to reconcile seemingly contradictory statements by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry regarding the American hostages in Iran.
The question is whether freeing the hostages was brought up during the recent nuclear negotiations with the Tehran regime.
During the regular briefing for White House reporters Friday, Newsmax quoted directly from the president’s celebrated exchange with Major Garrett of CBS News at his news conference July 15. We noted that he told Garrett "now if the question is why did we not tie negotiations to their release, meaning the hostages, think about the logic that that creates."
Obama went on to say that Iran would realize: "You know what, maybe we can get additional concessions out of the Americans by holding these individuals."
Newsmax then quoted Kerry’s appearance on the "Morning Joe" TV program July 16, when he said of the talks with Iran: "There was not a meeting that took place, not one meeting that took place — believe me, that's not an exaggeration — where we did not raise the issue of our American citizens being held."
Noting the apparent contradiction in the statements from Obama and Kerry, we asked press secretary Josh Earnest if he could possibly clear it up.
"I can," he replied. "Even while the negotiations were ongoing, Secretary Kerry and other Americans frequently raised the case of Americans who were being unjustly detained in Iran with their counterparts on the sidelines of the ongoing negotiations."
The president’s top spokesman emphasized that "there was never a situation in which American negotiators offered up these unjustly detained Americans as a bargaining chip in the ongoing negotiations. It is our view that those Americans should be released without any condition so that they can return to the United States and be reunited with their families. We continue to advocate for their release."
Returning to the president’s reply to Garrett, Earnest told us he "made an important point in the news conference in saying that the successful conclusion of the nuclear negotiations was, as all of you know, not at all a foregone conclusion. In fact, there was some healthy skepticism about whether or not this would actually be completed, as evidenced by the fact that the negotiations weren’t completed until two weeks after the original deadline."
Were the fate of the hostages "tied to the successful completion of the nuclear negotiations and the negotiations had not yielded an agreement," he insisted, "it would have only set back our efforts to try to secure their release."
Obama decided, Earnest said, to routinely — and as Secretary Kerry indicated, daily — make clear that the safe return of these American citizens is a top priority of the administration.
"We were not willing to subject them to the back-and-forth bargaining that took place in the nuclear talks."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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