A top political strategist and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps officer told supporters that Iran should kidnap hostages and ransom them back to the United States for “blood money.”
“Here’s how the IRGC generates funds. The IRGC detains a spy like Jason Rezaian,” Hassan Abbasi can be heard saying in a video that surfaced on Wednesday. “The U.S. pleads for him to be released, and we ask them to pay for him. Our government gets paid $1.7 billion to hand over this spy. By detaining one spy, the IRGC earns the $1-2 billion, which it was supposed to receive from the government budget.”
Rezaian is an Iranian American journalist who served as Tehran bureau chief for the Washington Post before he was arrested and convicted of espionage in a closed-door trial in Iran in 2015. He was released during President Barack Obama’s tenure as part of a prisoner swap on Jan. 16, 2016, the same day that U.S. officials paid Iran $1.7 billion.
Singapore News Channel, Singapore News Network 