John Kirby spoke to MSNBC to clarify that the Biden Administration has the option to freeze the $6 billion in Iranian assets it recently unfroze in exchange for Americans hostages- but doesn’t exactly have any plans to do so.
While acknowledging Iran’s complicity in funding terrorism (not not the recent Hamas terror attacks against Israel), Kirby trotted out the administration’s talking points that the money can only be used for “humanitarian purposes.” Perhaps if we paid the Iranians in “humanitarian aid gift cards” that would be the case, but cash can be spent on whatever, regardless of what we may want.
Host Katy Tur asked: “You have told me that the money that was unfrozen for Iran, that $6 billion, is not cash that gets handed to Iran, it is aid that gets handed — material aid, medical supplies, etc. It’s never going to be cash. If our intelligence community does find that Iran had a hand in this, a direct hand in this attack, does that $6 billion, that aid, get refrozen?”
Kirby responded: “I’m not able to get ahead of where we are and speculate about any policy decisions coming down the pike here. We just don’t have any intel. or evidence that points to Iran’s direct participation in these attacks. We’re obviously going to take a look at this, though, Katy. We’re going to take a look at this as deep and wide as we can to see if there’s anything there. But I don’t want to get ahead of knowledge we don’t have and then translate that into policy decisions. But you’re right, that money is Iranian money, and it can only be used with approved vendors for humanitarian purposes. The Iranian people will get the benefit of the medical supplies, the agricultural products, the food, that kind of thing. The Iranian regime will never be able to touch any of those funds.”
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Matt Palumbo is the author of Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers: How the Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry and The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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