Obama Says Payment to Iran Was Not 'Ransom'

Look-ups for ransom increased dramatically on August 18th, after a spokesperson for the State Department said the U.S. used a $400 million payment to Iran as "leverage" to secure the safe release of American prisoners.

Photo: Wikimedia

While the Obama administration maintains that the payment was not ransom, both the Iranian press and many Republicans have described it that way.

President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials have said the payment didn’t amount to ransom, because the U.S. owed the money to Iran as part of a longstanding dispute linked to a failed arms deal from the 1970s.
—Jay Solomon and Carol Lee, The Wall Street Journal, 18 Aug., 2016

Republicans have described the payment as ransom. The resulting social media discussion of "the definition of ransom" led to a spike in traffic to... the definition of ransom.

.@statedeptspox after watching this: https://t.co/f6peuvtrqf, I think it would be prudent for you to look at this: https://t.co/Urgdha8Gty

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) August 18, 2016

This sort of sounds like the definition of a ransom, doesn't it? https://t.co/UHrl3fJCG4

— Omri Ceren (@cerenomri) August 18, 2016

Today’s semantics debate over the definition of “ransom” reminds me of this @JyShapiro: https://t.co/qvczSS3bP7 pic.twitter.com/AQD8zHvH0k

— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) August 19, 2016

Ransom is a fairly old word: its use dates back to the 12th century. It shares a seemingly incongruous connection with the word redemption: both words may be traced back to the Latin redemptio, which may refer to the redemption from sin or the act of ransoming.

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