National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby pushed back against claims that the $6 billion in Iranian funds released by the U.S. last month during a prisoner swap allowed Iran to use other money to help fund Palestinian militant group Hamas in the wake of its attacks on Israel.
Pressed on “Fox News Sunday,” over if the deal received other financial obligations for Iran, Kirby said, “This is the fungibility argument, which is also a false argument, too.”
“It’s not like the Iranians were sitting around and saying, hmm, ‘well, we have $6 billion that we can free up to go fund terrorists and not feed our — we don’t have to worry about feeding our people.’ They were never worried about feeding their people, they were never worried about actual humanitarian assistance to their own population and again, they don’t have any access to it.”
Last month, the Biden administration agreed to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian assets in exchange for the freedom of five wrongfully detained American citizens.
In doing so, the Biden administration granted clemency to five Iranians and issued a blanket waiver for international banks to allow the transfer of the Iranian oil sale proceeds, which were frozen in South Korea, to a bank in Qatar.
“The money was never frozen when it was in South Korea, any more than it was frozen when it got to Qatar. And it was part of a series of accounts set up by the Trump administration,” Kirby said. “There was no human cry back then when Secretary Pompeo announced these accounts, and that Iranians spent down billions of dollars from the other accounts from what supposed to be humanitarian purposes, but we don’t really know. None of that — we can’t account for that. I can only account for that $6 billion, and it’s all still in Qatar.”
The $6 billion transfer came under renewed scrutiny last week after Hamas, a militant group that Iran has supported, launched a multipronged attack against Israel. Hamas fighters invaded multiple Israeli towns by land, sea and air, leaving more than 1,000 dead, mostly civilians.
Last week, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) unveiled legislation to immediately freeze the $6 billion transfer.
Several U.S. officials have pushed back against the Republican lawmakers’ criticism of the deal, claiming the $6 billion in frozen funds have remained unspent.
Kirby echoed this Sunday, saying the transfer has been unaccessed by the Iranians while the U.S. government is “watching it [the $6 billion] like a hawk,” and “keeping tabs on every single dime.”
“And even if it was [accessed], even if it was, it would go to vendors that we approved to buy food, water, medicine and ship it in to Iran, right to the Iranian people through humanitarian aid organization,” Kirby said. “The regime never sees it.”
Fighting in Israel and Gaza has claimed over 3,600 lives — mostly civilians — from both sides, with thousands more injured since militant group Hamas’s multi-pronged surprise attack on Oct. 7. The State Department on Saturday upped confirmed American casualties to 27.
Israeli forces launched a major counteroffensive against Hamas, bombarding the Gaza Strip with air strikes. Over 1 million people were warned last Friday to evacuate in anticipation of a ground attack.
In Gaza, an estimated 2,329 Palestinians have died and 9,042 were injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Authorities in Israel said over 1,300 Israelis have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them civilians killed in Hamas’s deadly surprise attack last weekend, according to The Associated Press (AP.).
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