In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas sneak attack on Israel, many couldn’t help but see a connection between the bloodshed and the Biden administration’s recent unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets that was part of a prisoner swap last month.
The Biden administration, which has also funded the PLO, has tried desperately to disassociate itself from responsibility for the attack.
“Let’s be clear,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement posted to X (formerly known as Twitter), “the deal to bring U.S. citizens home from Iran has nothing to do with the horrific attack on Israel. Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine. Anything to the contrary is false.”
National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson posted an almost verbatim statement to the platform. “I can’t comment on 2024 because of the Hatch Act. But I can clarify the facts: Not a single cent from these funds has been spent, and when it is spent, it can only be spent on things like food and medicine for the Iranian people,” she wrote Saturday. “These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today and this is not the time to spread disinformation.”
None of this matters. None of it.
“Did any money get transferred genuinely misses the forest for the trees about what the Islamic Republic can and has done in the past with abusing humanitarian accounts,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow Behnam Ben Taleblu told the Washington Examiner.
In fact, last month, the president of Iran suggested that the Iranian government would decide how it would spend the money — making it quite clear that they had no intention of complying with the conditions put forth by the Biden administration.
Share this so there is no confusion about the $6 billion that Biden just unfroze for Iran.
Our government is now claiming that it was only to be used for humanitarian purposes.
On September 12th the President of Iran talked about how they would use the money. pic.twitter.com/FuyPa4RQRk
— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 7, 2023
And then there’s the unfortunate fact that Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC that Iran did, in fact, give financial support to Hamas for its surprise attack on Israel. A senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, confirmed this.
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The Iranian regime’s connection to and financing of terrorism is no secret. The Biden administration can’t claim to have been under the impression that Iran isn’t a threat to the United States and our allies. But just because Barack Obama was willing to give them millions of dollars and a pathway to nukes every time the Iranian regime said “Death to America” or “Death to Israel,” that doesn’t mean Joe Biden should be following in his footsteps.
The Biden administration needs to “call a spade a spade and connect the dots between Tehran and their proxies,” says Taleblu. “Connect the dots between how it has abused humanitarian accounts in the past.”
“Given where things are, I think it’ll be hard to look away,” Taleblu continued. “And I don’t know how this administration can look away and continue to disconnect the dots, but here we are.”
Unfortunately, it looks as though the administration is turning a blind eye to the root causes of the attack and actively trying to pull the wool over our eyes about the administration’s role in it. Going forward, the Biden administration will be treating this like a political problem, absolving itself of any responsibility because there’s an election coming up next year.
