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Paying Tribute to Iran

Matt Fitzgibbons, PatriotMusic.com

Recently, the President of the United States was discovered to have secretly organized a shipment of $440 million to Iran which happened to coincide with the release of four American prisoners held in Tehran. It was paid in foreign currency, ostensibly because it is illegal to pay U.S. Dollars to Iran. At least two more Americans have since been arrested. Was it a ransom or a tribute to Iran?

For a thousand years (from the 9th to the 19th centuries) the four nation states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, were known as the Barbary states. During this period, they were widely feared by anyone travelling by sea throughout the Western Mediterranean. From the cliffs above their ports, they would identify passing ships from miles away and ambush them with as many as 80 corsairs to kill, steal their cargo, crew and passengers and either hold them captive for ransom or sell them into slavery. They would, of course, pay a pre-negotiated sum to the State’s leader, and divide the rest amongst themselves, keeping the healthy and killing the rest. From the 16th to 19th centuries, Barbary Pirates sold as many as 1.25 million souls into slavery, raiding Italy and Spain so often that coastal villages there were considered too dangerous. At various times, their attacks reached as far as Iceland and Ireland. Algiers alone was said to have had as many as 20,000 captives at one time. Prisoners of wealth might secure their freedom through ransom but those less fortunate were doomed to a life of slavery.
The more powerful European nations eventually negotiated treaties which required them to pay annual bribes (referred to as tributes) to enable their ships to be left alone. Periodically, the Barbary Pirates would break the treaties as an effective means of negotiating more money. But since the smaller nations were unable to afford the bribes, their ships were regular targets, which effectively reduced competition, driving up the value of the wealthier nations’ goods. It was simply the cost of doing business. Benjamin Franklin is said to have heard London merchants say, “if there were no Algiers, it would be worth England’s while to build one.”

By the early 18th century, Great Britain’s Royal Navy had become so powerful; they could negotiate more modest tributes. If the pirates didn’t like it, England would sink enough of their ships or shell their ports until they agreed on a price. Up until the American War for Independence, America benefited from this arrangement as a British Colony. During the War, she was protected as an Ally of France under their treaties with the pirates. Afterwards, the Treaty of Paris officially ended America’s war with England, and then it was a very different story.

In 1777, Morocco was the first nation to publicly recognize the United States and in 1784, it became the first Barbary state to seize an American vessel and its crew. While in England, having been commissioned by Congress to seek commercial treaties with that nation and Portugal, John Adams met the envoy from Tripoli. He said at the time that the man was either a saint or the devil himself but didn’t know which. American merchantmen in the Mediterranean were regularly murdered and sold into slavery but the envoy told Adams that “his only interest in life was to do good and make other people happy”, assuring him that Americans would be free to travel by sea unharmed for a million dollars or so. Adams would have preferred war over tribute, but knew that Congress neither had a Navy for war nor money for tribute. The then Minister to France,