Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio roundly criticized President Barack Obama and his administration Sunday after the announcement that four Americans in Iran would be released in a prisoner swap. Appearing on CBS' Face The Nation, the Florida senator said that it only encourages other nations and groups to jail Americans or take them hostage because "there's a price for them."
"It proves once again now that nations and enemies of America around the world know there's a price for Americans," Rubio told Face The Nation host John Dickerson in the interview, which aired on Sunday. "If you take an American hostage, Barack Obama will cut a deal with you, whether it's Bergdahl, what he did with the Castro brothers and now what he's done with Iran."
Iran announced Saturday that it released four prisoners, one of whom is Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who had been detained since 2014 without knowledge of the charges against him. All four of the prisoners, Iranian-American dual nationals, were reportedly released "within the framework of exchanging prisoners," according to the Associated Press.
"None of them had violated any real laws. And in fact some of them weren't even charged," Rubio said in the interview. "One of them was a reporter. The other one was a pastor. They'd done nothing."
From the campaign trail on Saturday, Rubio had a similar criticism. "We shouldn't be involved in swaps," he said, according to TIME. "The fact of the matter is that this tells us everything we need to know about the Iranian regime -- that they take people hostage in order to gain concessions. And the fact that they can get away with it with this administration I think has created an incentive for more governments to do this around the world."
Rubio said that this is part of a pattern set by the Obama administration, citing the 2014 exchange of Cuban spies for a U.S. aide worker in Cuba and the swap of Guantanamo Bay prisoners for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
