After the deadly attack on Israel, the Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that Americans may have been kidnapped or killed by Hamas.
In an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker on Sunday, Blinken was asked, “Does the administration know at this point if U.S. citizens were among the dead or those taken hostage?”
“So we have reports that several Americans may be among the dead,” Blinken answered. “We are very actively working to verify those reports. Similarly, we’ve seen reports about hostages and they’re, again, we’re very actively trying to verify them, and nail that down.”
Blinken was then directly asked if Iran was involved or held responsibility for the attack. The Secretary of State acknowledged that Hamas has had a “long relationship” with Iran but wouldn’t admit to concrete evidence of a coordinated attack.
“We don’t have anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or carrying it out, but that’s something we’re looking at very carefully. And we’ve got to see where the facts lead,” Blinken said.
However later he did say that money is fungible and money spent on humanitarian aid may not all go towards that goal. “Iran has unfortunately always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism,” he said.
So the world wonders just why on Earth the Biden administration would give Iran $6 billion knowing how much they support terrorism.
A critic on Twitter said, “If you know Iran always support terrorism, why the hell are you giving billions of dollar? Are you stupid or an ally of Iran?”
During the interview, Welker asked Blinken since the Biden administration decided to unfreeze Iranian assets, wouldn’t that mean the administration should be blamed for the terror attacks? Blinken immediately realized the trouble he was in and deflected as if the United States had nothing to do with the assets becoming available.
“The facts are that these were these were not U.S. taxpayer dollars, these were Iranian resources that it had accumulated from the sale of its oil that were stuck in a bank in South Korea from day one,” Blinken quickly responded.
“Under our law under our sanctions, going back many years, it’s always had the right to use those funds for humanitarian purposes, for food, for medicine, for medical equipment. Funds were moved from one bank to another where it could more easily do that,” he said. “Not a single cent has been spent from that account. When any money is spent from that account, it can only be used for medical supplies for food for medicine, and those who are saying otherwise are either misinformed or misinforming, and it’s wrong either way.”
Republicans aren’t buying it and Israel is going to war.