Baldwin did support the Iran deal. But the deal didn’t provide cash.

In the U.S Senate race in Wisconsin, Republican challenger Eric Hovde has laid out an extensive case against Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, including her record on foreign policy. 

Among other things, he takes aim at Baldwin’s vote on the Iran nuclear deal, which he frames as support for terrorism. 

"Despite Iran’s long history of financing terrorism, my opponent Senator Baldwin was one of the staunchest supporters of the Iran deal which sent billions of dollars and plane loads of cash to Iran," his campaign website says.

Did Baldwin support the Iran deal? And did it do what Hovde claims it did?

Yes. And not so much.

We have addressed similar claims against Baldwin twice, so we are quite familiar with this line of attack. In both cases, we rated the claim Mostly False.

The first part, looking at how Baldwin voted on the deal, is the most straightforward part of the claim – and nothing about it is really in dispute. 

In 2015 Baldwin did vote with other Democrats against a Republican effort to block then-President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Republicans failed to get the 60 votes needed to block the deal.

Likewise, a 2020 report from the federal Bureau of Counterterrorism notes the U.S. has designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, including support of  "Hezbollah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various terrorist and militant groups in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East."

When we asked Hovde’s campaign for backup, it included that link among many others – but none of the information provided really goes beyond what we have seen when we rated such claims in the past.

So, let’s turn to what we said in a June 29, 2018 fact-check. 

At the time, we were checking Republican Kevin Nicholson’s claim that the Iran deal "handed billions of dollars of cash on cargo planes, sent it to a state sponsor of terror, and Tammy Baldwin was one of the first U.S. senators to get on board and support that." 

Nicholson was running in the GOP primary, but lost and Leah Vukmir went on to face Baldwin. In that item we noted:

The deal, struck in July 2015 under Obama, was with Iran, the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It was aimed at making it harder for Iran to make a nuclear bomb. The deal restricted certain Iranian nuclear activities for periods between 10 to 25 years, and allowed for more intrusive, permanent monitoring. It also prohibited Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons in the future.

As part of the deal, Iran did get access to tens of billions of dollars in assets  — but the vast majority of those assets are Iran’s own money.

And what cash was delivered on a plane was far less than billions.

Let’s pause here, and apply that to what Hovde said. 

Hovde implies the money was simply given to Iran, or at least makes no mention of the context around it and the fact it was largely money Iran was owed. Worse, there is no mention of the fact it was a nuclear deal that called for Iran to halt work toward a nuclear weapon.

Former President Donald Trump undid the deal in 2018. 

Featured Fact-check

Donald Trump

stated on April 26, 2018 in an interview on "Fox & Friends"

The nuclear deal gave Iran "$150 billion, giving $1.8 billion in cash — in actual cash carried out in barrels and in boxes from airplanes."

Hovde’s spokesman, Ben Voelkel, also sent us a CNN story detailing how the U.S. sent a plane with $400 million to Iran on the day it released four American prisoners – which was also the day the nuclear deal was formally implemented.

This is what our earlier Nicholson fact-check said about that money and the apparent single plane (not the planes plural Hovde described):

• The deal released Iranian assets frozen under a variety of sanctions. The assets, cash in the bank, real estate or something else, belonged to Iran in the first place. The total value  — worldwide — of freed Iranian assets was about $56 billion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

• According to the U.S. State Department, Iran received about $1.7 billion from the United States  — $400 million plus interest. The payment was indirectly linked to the nuclear deal. The money was legally due to Iran. The country had paid America for military equipment in 1979, but the Iranian revolution came and the hardware was never delivered.

• Many news organizations reported the delivery of the $400 million in an unmarked cargo plane after American officials were certain that three Americans held in Iran were on their way home. It is not known how the remaining $1.3 billion made its way to Iran.

So, while Hovde started with an element of truth, his claim veered widely from there, just as past claims have.

Hovde said Baldwin "was one of the staunchest supporters of the Iran deal which sent billions of dollars and plane loads of cash to Iran."

Baldwin said she voted for the deal because it was in the best interest of America's security to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Thirteen Democrats announced support before her.

Beyond that, the deal itself contained no provisions to send money to Iran. It did lift some sanctions, freeing up reserves already held by the country. As far as the plane load of cash, it was sent separately from the deal, to deliver money that was legally due to Iran. 

Our definition of Mostly False is a statement that "contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."

As with the earlier fact checks, that fits here.