The State Department is scrambling to explain why an unmarked plane delivered $400 million in cash to Iran at the time American prisoners were released earlier this year.

Department spokesman John Kirby appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning and took a grilling.

Kirby insisted there was nothing new in a Tuesday Wall Street Journal article, but only added “color” to what the Obama administration supposedly acknowledged at the time it happened.

“The fact that we’d settled this claim and done so, I might add, by saving American taxpayers billions of dollars that we might have had to pay had we not reached this compromise,” Kirby said.

“This compromise was done to the taxpayers’ benefit because there were potentially billions of dollars that they would have had to pay had we not reached this compromise,” he said.

“That’s billions of dollars more than would have been available that they’re not going to have now.”

In other words, be grateful: they could have sent Iran a whole lot more!

Kirby insisted there was no “secret” about the plane delivering the pallets of cash in the dark of night.

He also claimed the timing was “completely coincidental” with the release of several Americans imprisoned in the country.

Kirby bristled at the notion that Iran believes the $400 million was a “ransom payment.”

“Look, you can believe us,” Kirby told host Bill Hemmer, “or you can believe an unnamed, anonymous defense official from Iran.

“You choose who you’re going to believe to be more credible.”

Kirby’s assertion that the payment was “completely coincidental” to the captives’ release is in direct conflict with a statement by White House spokesman Josh Earnest on January 19th.

He said the total $1.7 billion for Iran and the release of the prisoners was “not a coincidence.”