The rogue Islamist regime governing Iran insisted in multiple statements on Thursday and Friday that the administration of leftist American President Joe Biden can no longer do anything to prevent Tehran from accessing $6 billion freed for Iranian use as part of a prisoner swap in September.
Corporate establishment media outlets confirmed on September 11 that the Biden administration would allow $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets, held at the time in South Korea, to be transferred to Iranian ally Qatar for the regime’s use. Iran is the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism and the funds had been frozen in response to both its funding of terrorist activity and its extensive history of human rights atrocities against its own people. The transfer coincided with the sudden release of five American nationals from Iran’s notorious Evin prison, which the regime uses to torture political prisoners.
WATCH — Dem Rep. Moskowitz: We Should Re-Freeze the Iran Prisoner Swap Funds:
“This is not a ransom,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby insisted in August.
The $6 billion transfer has attracted renewed condemnation in light of the massacre of over 1,300 civilians, including babies and elderly people in their homes, by the genocidal jihadist organization Hamas in Israel. In a sweeping attack on residential communities in Israel that Hamas dubbed “the al-Aqsa flood,” jihadists slaughtered families in their homes, killed hundreds at a music festival, and filmed themselves celebrating and desecrating dead bodies. The Palestinian terror attack happened on the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret, the final day of the annual High Holy Day cycle.
The Iranian government celebrated the killings with a street party in Tehran featuring free sweets and fireworks.
The U.S. State Department estimated in 2020 that Iran funnels more than $100 million per year to Hamas and another Palestinian radical group, Islamic Jihad. A Hamas spokesman told the BBC on the record on Saturday that the Iranian government had offered “direct backing” for the massacre.
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The Biden administration has been facing renewed condemnation for freeing Iranian assets to be used by the regime in the aftermath of the Hamas killings. Republicans in the Senate introduced a billion on Wednesday urging the immediate freezing of the assets before they can be used – assuming that the White House’s assertions the money has not been touched are true.
Multiple American corporate media outlets reported on Thursday, citing various sources “familiar with the matter,” that Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told Democrat leaders in the House of Representatives that the Biden administration would cut Iran’s access to the money. The far-left New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN all reported the claim. CNN described the Treasury as discussing the issue with Qatar, where the money is currently sitting, and reaching a “quiet understanding” that requests by Iran to access the money would be denied. Iran has not, however, requested that money yet, according to the White House.
“It’s still sitting in the Qatari bank, all of it. Every dime of it,” White House Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby claimed this week.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed in an interview on Thursday that the Biden administration “retain[ed] the right to freeze” the money again if necessary, though he added, confusingly, that Iran had “always been allowed to use” the money so long as it went to “humanitarian” expenses.
WATCH: White House Won’t Commit to Freezing Billions in Prisoner Swap Funds if Iran Was Directly Involved in Attacks on Israel:
“For technical reasons, Iran was having trouble actually using the funds, which it’s always been allowed to use for humanitarian purposes, under our sanctions, under our laws,” Blinken said of the $6 billion, “we always carve out humanitarian, food, medicine, medical equipment. So, what we did is we moved the money from one account in South Korea, to another account in Qatar, where the money could actually be used.”
Blinken insisted, contrary to the Iranian government, that the money could only be accessed “under the supervision of our Treasury Department, only for humanitarian purposes. And not a dollar of that money has been spent to date. And we retain the right to freeze that account.”
Iranian officials have insisted that they already controlled the cash and Washington had no power to take it back.
“The US government knows that it can NOT renege on the agreement,” Ali Karimi Magham, a spokesman for Iran at the United Nations, said on Thursday. “The money rightfully belongs to the people of Iran, earmarked for the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to facilitate the acquisition of all essential requisites for the Iranians.”
WATCH — White House: Can’t Predict if Iran Prisoner Swap Will Incentivize Further Hostage-Taking:
The Iranian state outlet PressTV on Thursday quoted the president of the country, Ebrahim Raisi, insisting that Iran has “full authority on its assets” and no challenges to that authority at press time. An Iranian state-affiliated outlet, Nour News, also insisted on Thursday that despite reports of the “quiet understanding” on the funds, “there has been no change in the issue of Iran’s access to its foreign exchange resources in Qatari banks.”
PressTV reported that the money in question was currently sitting in Iranian bank accounts, meaning they were under the Islamic regime’s control.
PressTV had reported that Iran regained access to the money on September 18, citing regime officials.
“We received an official letter from the Qatari authorities yesterday, according to which the accounts of Iranian banks had been activated, and today, 5.573 billion and 492 thousand euros have been deposited into the accounts of six Iranian banks at two banks, Al Ahli and Al Dukhan,” the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, Mohammad Reza Farzin, reportedly confirmed at the time.
