Elon Musk involved with Iran hostage deal despite no formal government role: report

The world’s richest man may have made promises to Iran from the U.S. government behind the scenes to help get an Italian journalist released from jail there. If true, the action would raise questions about whether Musk violated the Logan Act. The New York Times reported Wednesday that “the tech billionaire had a secret meeting with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations.” Among the promises he made to Iran on behalf of the U.S. government was that the U.S. wouldn’t pressure Italy to extradite an Iranian engineer detained in Italy for supplying drone parts used “in an attack on a U.S. military base that killed three.”ALSO READ: Here’s what happens when the world’s richest man buys the presidencyThree U.S. soldiers were killed in Jordan at the end of January 2024 and 40 others were injured when a drone attacked a military base near the Syrian border, the Department of Defense said in a release at the time. “The three soldiers killed are Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett of Savannah, Georgia. All three were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, Fort Moore, Georgia,” said the DOD. The soldiers were at Tower 22 of the Jordanian Defense Network as part of the coalition working to defeat ISIS. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that the attack had “the footprints of Kataib Hezbollah,” which is an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-backed militia. “A senior Biden administration official said the American government had not been consulted about the negotiations, had not been given advance word about the releases, and disapproved of the deal,” reported the Times. John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, told the Times that the prisoner release deal was “an Italian decision to go from soup to nuts.” But it turns out that wasn’t entirely true.Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, went to Mar-a-Lago on Jan. 4, where Trump has been operating his transition and Elon Musk has been living. Trump has bragged to friends that Musk is renting a $2,000-a-night cottage on the property. The deal happened four days after the meeting at Mar-a-Lago. While the U.S. government denied American involvement in the prisoner swap, Prime Minister Meloni told the press that Sala’s release was due to the “complex work of diplomatic triangulation with Iran, and obviously also with the United States of America.”“The most likely reconstruction is that she got a signal of understanding from Trump that the incoming administration would not raise huge problems if it released Abedini,” said former Italian diplomat Ferdinando Nelli Feroci, speaking to the Times.Musk will reportedly have his own office in the White House complex but won’t have an official appointment, the Times reported Monday. Read the report here.

Read Full Article