By Trump’s own description, his social relationship with Epstein started several decades ago, in the late 1980s.Describing Epstein to
Landon Thomas Jr. of New York magazine for a 2002 profile, Trump made a comment that, in retrospect, was frighteningly on-the-nose:
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Really though, it's rich to try and paint Trump as anything but a womanizer.
So what are the facts, as opposed to the spin, behind the $400 million controversy?
What’s Behind the Financial Dispute Between the U.S. and Iran?
In November 1979, Iran’s revolutionary government took 52 Americans hostages at the U.S. embassy, and the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Tehran. In retaliation, Washington froze $12 billion in Iranian assets held on our shores. The hostage crisis was resolved in 1981 at a conference in Algiers, and the U.S. returned $3 billion to Iran, with more funds going either to pay creditors, or into escrow. The two nations also established a tribunal in the Hague called the Iran United States Claims Tribunal to settle claims both leveled by each government against the other, U.S. citizens versus Iran, and vice versa.
The major issue between the two governments was a $400 million payment for military equipment made by the government of the Shah of Iran, prior to the 1979 uprising that topped him. The U.S. banned delivery of the jets and other weapons amid the hostage crisis, but froze the $400 million advance payment. “The Pentagon handled arms purchases from foreign countries,” says
Gary Sick, a former National Security Council official who served as the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. “Defense took care of the details. So the $400 million scheduled purchase was a government-to-government transaction. The U.S. government was holding the money. That’s why it was so difficult to resolve.”
By 2015, the issue stood before a panel of nine judges, including three independent jurists, who were reportedly near a decision on binding arbitration. According to Obama administration officials, the U.S. was concerned that the tribunal would mandate an award in the multiple billions of dollars. “The Iranians wanted $10 billion,” says Sick.”I estimate that the tribunal would have awarded them $4 billion. That’s what the lawyers were saying. It’s not as much as they wanted, but a lot more than we paid.”
So instead, the U.S. negotiators convinced Iran to move the dispute from arbitration to a private settlement. The two sides reached an agreement in mid-2015, at the same time as the U.S. and Iran reached a comprehensive pact on curtailing Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. The financial deal called for the U.S. to refund $1.7 billion to Tehran, consisting of the original $400 million contract for military equipment, plus $1.3 billion in interest.
![[laughing]](http://l.yimg.com/j/assets/img/emoticons/classic/laugh.r191677.gif "Laughing [laughing]")
The previous 4 presidents over 35 years someone found a way not to pay the world's largest sponsor of terror. And then gave the cherry on top by acquiescing to flying part of it in pallets of preferred currency in the middle of the night. Like the 500k killed in Syria andnot doing anything about Crimea, this was all about getting a legacy-setting agreement with the blessing of Russia that dumb whores like you would cherish.
