The money was stashed in South Korean bank accounts and unable to be accessed by Iran until the Biden administration agreed to a deal that linked the $6 billion to an exchange of political prisoners last month. The first step in reuniting Iran with its cash, previously earned through sale of its oil, was to move the money to accounts in Qatar.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that the U.S. and Qatar have reached an agreement in which the Qataris will not act on any request from Tehran to access the $6 billion. However, the Qataris' agreement is open-ended and stops short of saying Iran will never receive the funds.
"I'm glad they're slowing things down a bit, but we've got to make sure there's a permanent freeze on this. We have some legislation we're working on in the Senate to be able to make that happen," Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska) reported Thursday on Washington Watch.
Ricketts is among 20 senators who last week wrote a letter urging the administration to freeze the $6 billion immediately. "To stand by and allow Iran access to these funds as Hamas infiltrates Israel and murders, rapes and mutilates countless Israelis is unconscionable," the lawmakers wrote, according to Fox News.
The administration has maintained that none of the $6 billion has been accessed and therefore was not used to fund the Hamas attack on Israel. The administration has always stated that Iran had agreed to spend the money only for "humanitarian" needs.
Critics have completed the thought that the administration did not: that it's easier to spend money you already have when you know a major influx of cash is around the corner.
Administration evasive with answers on $6B to Iran
According to the senator, very little about Biden's handover of $6 billion to Iran has been transparent. "We don't know a lot, frankly," Ricketts told show host Tony Perkins. "I've talked to many who have said [Iranian leader Ebrahim Raisi] is going to use this money any way he wants. When you free up money that you were going to spend on food, you can now spend it on terrorism.
"This was a bad idea to begin with," he continued. "It was cut in secret with the Biden administration. We were not made aware of it on the Foreign Relations Committee."
However, interesting things have come to light about possible Iranian influence in the U.S. Department of State. Earlier this month, State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told media there was no reason to believe Iranian spies has infiltrated State before immediately confirming an investigation into Rob Malley, the department's special envoy for Iran. Malley, who has ties to Iranian intelligence, was suspended in July for possible mishandling of classified information.
"The Iranians created a fake think tank and they recruited Americans to basically staff it and push the Iranian point of view on our State Department. Some of these people were very close advisors to the State Department," Ricketts said.
Ricketts: Biden administration has gotten too cozy with Iran
A possible leak within the Department of State further validates the voices of critics who say the administration's relationship with Iran has grown too close.
"It just demonstrates the incompetence of the Biden administration that they could allow this to happen in the first place," the senator claimed. "You would think this would raise red flags with people about how this whole process was going on, but it's just a string of failures the Biden administration has had on a number of different fronts and why they really don't have any credibility."
According to Ricketts, chaos at State has the Senate looking closer at the Obama-era "nuclear deal" with Iran, which was supposed to prevent that country from obtaining nuclear weapons. Then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal; but before the Hamas attack on Israel, the Biden administration was warm to the idea of restarting things, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ricketts argues Iran is in violation of the deal right now – and points out the deal is another diplomatic matter the administration doesn't discuss much.
"To my knowledge, the State Department … really hasn't done anything about that, so that's one of the things my Senate colleagues and I are asking questions about. With Iran in apparent violation of the agreement, what is the State Department doing? This is where we're just not getting the answers we're looking for," he concluded.
