Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, told Newsmax on Monday that one problem in the current situation in the Middle East is that Iran has been allowed to flourish financially since Joe Biden took over as president, with foreign reserves ballooning to $75 billion in just three years.
That's a stark contrast to the $4 billion Iran had in reserves when President Donald Trump left office.
Sullivan told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" that sanctions need to get reimposed on Iran, but Biden is "too afraid to do it."
"The approach to Iran has to be, of course, kinetic with military force the way President Trump used military force to kill [Qasem] Soleimani, the Quds force general, but very importantly, it also needs to include non-kinetic actions like sanctions," Sullivan told Van Susteren.
"Think about this: by the end of the Trump administration, because of the massive sanctions we had put on the oil and gas sector, the Iranians had about $4 billion left in foreign reserves. That's not a lot of money at all in terms of foreign reserves," Sullivan said. "The Biden administration comes in and immediately says, 'We're not going to enforce those sanctions. As a matter of fact, we're going to get Iran money.' And right now Iran has well over $75 billion in foreign reserves in the three years since the Trump administration.
"And guess what they're using that $75 billion for? To fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, to train them," he said.
Sullivan blasted the Biden administration for retreating to its "default position" of "appeasement of Iran."
"We need to reimpose massive sanctions against the oil and gas regime. And this president is too afraid to do it. I have directly asked him to do it and he won't," Sullivan said.
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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