State Department: $400 million cash payment to Iran was contingent on US prisoner release

Spokesman John Kirby says negotiations over the United States' returning Iranian money from a decades-old account was conducted separately from the prisoner talks. But he says the US withheld delivery of the cash as leverage until the US citizens had left Iran.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the US refused to hand over the $400 million cash payment that was being held at the Geneva Airport "until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three freed Americans departed from Tehran."

Both the release of the prisoners and the release of the $400 million to Iranian control occurred January 17.

Kirby spoke after The Wall Street Journal reported that the departures of the crisscrossing planes were linked.