PRESIDENTIAL RACE | AP Fact Check: Trump off base on Clinton and Iran payment

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, was responsible for negotiations that led to a $400 million U.S. payment to Iran when she was secretary of state.

Reacting to a Wall Street Journal story published today that described the delivery of the $400 million in cash to Tehran in January, Trump accused Clinton on Twitter of having opened talks to give Iran the money.

Trump, in a tweet today: "Our incompetent Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was the one who started talks to give 400 million dollars, in cash, to Iran. Scandal!"

The facts: Trump is wrong about Clinton's involvement. The $400 million payment – plus $1.3 billion in interest to be paid later – is a separate issue from the Iran nuclear deal that Clinton initiated.

In the late 1970s the Iranian government, under the U.S.-backed shah, paid the United States $400 million for military equipment. The equipment was never delivered because in 1979, his government was overthrown, revolutionaries took American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran were severed.

In 1981, the United States and Iran agreed to set up a commission at The Hague that would rule on claims by each country for property and assets held by the other. Iran's $400 million claim was among many that had been tied up in litigation before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, and interest that the U.S. would have to pay for holding the money for so long was growing.