This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The administration of Joe Biden is lacking "credibility" on the issue of the $6 billion he has tried to turn over to Iran, according to one U.S. senator.
Biden had arranged for those funds to be moved from South Korea to Qatar pending release to Iran, which uses its money to fund terrorism, including Hamas.
With the development of the Hamas atrocities, Biden officials said they would block Iran from accessing the money.
But Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., openly wondered what could be believed.
"We don’t know a lot. It's just a string of failures the Biden administration has had on a number of different fronts … In my opinion, they really don’t have any credibility," Ricketts said on the "Washington Watch" program.
"The Biden administration was trying to return the $6 billion to Iran. They would have had to make purchases, [which were] supposed to be only [for] humanitarian goods, and then they would submit basically a receipt to us, and we would release the funds," he said.
He said the claim was that Iran would not be able to use that funding for terrorism.
First, he said, the deal made "no sense" at all. After all, money is fungible.
"Money can be used in a variety of different ways. So, even if they do spend money, say, on food, and get this money back from Qatar, they can spend it on anything they want. They can spend it on guns."
He also expressed concern Biden cut the deal with Iran in secret.
Tony Perkins, Family Research Council president, said, "They must think the American people are pretty dumb to say, ‘Well, they can only use it for food and humanitarian purposes.' Let’s say you’ve got a household budget of $200, and you were going to buy $50 worth of meat, but instead, somebody else gives you $50, and you go ahead and use that $50 to buy ammo."
Ricketts noted, "They’re just going to use it to again sponsor terrorism. And we can’t allow that to happen. … We got to make sure that 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."
He also expressed scorn for Biden, whose bureaucrats obviously were negotiating with Iran at the same time that Hamas was scheming to launch a terror assault on Israel.
Ricketts and other senators have written to Biden demanding those funds be frozen again.
And Biden says that cash won't be disbursed right away.
The senator warned that the United States needs to show a little more leadership.
"It just demonstrates the incompetence of the Biden administration that they could allow this to happen in the first place. You would think that this would raise red flags. They view us as being weak. Any time the United States shows weakness, we just encourage these bad actors — you know, these dictators, these terrorist groups — to start attacking us. The world is safer when we act strongly."
