It may look like ransom and sound like ransom, but, according to the Obama crew, it’s still not ransom. Merely “leverage.”

Guess it all depends on the meaning of the word “ransom.”

On Thursday, the State Department confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that it refused to let Iran take control of that $400 million cash payment until three US captives had been flown out of Tehran. But it still insists the payment was not ransom.

Team Obama has clung to this fiction by saying the money was owed to Iran since 1979 and because negotiations for the payment and for the Americans’ release were handled by “different teams.”

In fact, the Journal reported, the entire affair was “tightly scripted” — including the removal of five-year-old US sanctions on Air Iran, which delivered the cash, just 24 hours before the payment.

(Those sanctions, incidentally, were imposed because Air Iran ferries weapons and supplies for the Revolutionary Guard.)

Indeed, one of the captives, Pastor Saeed Abedini, says he and the others were kept waiting at the airport for nearly 24 hours; a senior Iranian intelligence official told him their release was dependent on the arrival of “a second plane.”

Yet the administration insists the timing was coincidental. President Obama dismisses any suggestion he paid a ransom.

Why the charade? Because US policy expressly forbids paying ransom.

There’s a problem, though: Iran considered it ransom. And since January, Iran has taken more Americans hostage. They’ll no doubt languish in captivity until Washington arranges another “coincidence.”