The Obama administration quietly shipped $400 million stacked on wooden pallets in an unmarked plane to Iran in January — just as Tehran was releasing four Americans who had been detained there, according to a report.

The huge cash load represented the first payment of a $1.7 billion debt that Iran, at an international tribunal in The Hague, claimed it was owed over a failed 1979 arms deal signed before the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal Tuesday night.

The Obama administration was accused Tuesday night of making the cash-for-hostages deal by timing the payout to the release — but US officials said the money was simply part of settling the nearly 40-year-old debt under the terms of the historic nuclear agreement hammered out in 2015.(nypost.com)…[+]