Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told Newsmax on Monday that "no one buys" the Biden administration's assurances that the $6 billion in oil assets recently made available to Iran are not being used to fund terrorism following the attack on Israel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that "not a single dollar" of the money made available to Iran in a prisoner exchange with the U.S. "has actually been spent to date," and he noted that "it's very carefully and closely regulated by the Treasury Department to make sure that it's only used for food, for medicine, for medical equipment."
However, Burlison cast doubt on those assertions, saying on "Newsline" that "No one buys the argument that the $6 billion that was released [to Iran] will only go towards humanitarian aid … everyone knows that's hogwash."
He added that Iran is "going to spend the money the way they see fit, regardless of any strings attached. Besides that, anyone knows how a government entity works when they get funding for one particular resource."
Burlison continued, "That means that they cannot divert all those the funding for that resource towards something else. And in this case, Iran loves to fund Hezbollah and Hamas. And it's time that we stand up and we sanction Iran and [show] that we support Israel."
He also criticized Democrats for their messaging after the attack on Israel, saying that "This kind of posturing has done nothing but fan the flames of the hate groups like Hamas and give them in some way just perverse justification for these horrific actions."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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