Republican presidential candidates are laying blame on the Biden administration after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel over the weekend.
Many of the GOP White House contenders are linking the deadly attack with a recent prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Iran, a historical supporter of Hamas, which resulted in the transfer of $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets.
“Joe Biden’s ineptitude, weakness, and incompetence has led to this horrible attack on Israel, and it will only get worse,” former President Trump, the front-runner of the GOP presidential field, said in a post on Truth Social.
On Saturday, Hamas — the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza — launched its deadliest attack on Israel in decades. Hamas forces invaded Israeli towns, set off missile strikes and reportedly captured Israeli soldiers and civilians.
The death toll has reportedly reached 700 in Israel and 500 in Gaza as of Monday, with hundreds more wounded. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on against the Palestinian militants after the attack, and Israel has launched retaliatory strikes, intensifying the violence.
A U.S. deputy national security adviser said on Monday that Iran was “broadly complicit” in the Hamas attack, but that it’s not clear whether there was direct involvement in the incident over the weekend.
President Biden on Saturday condemned the attacks and promised his administration’s “rock solid and unwavering” support for Israel’s security amid the conflict.
But former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2024 presidential candidate, argued that Biden “invited this war against Israel” by appeasing Israel’s enemies.
“This terrorism is funded by Biden’s idiotic release of $6 billion to the Iranians,” Christie said.
The Biden administration recently agreed to a prisoner exchange with Iran to secure the release of five Americans who had been detained by Tehran. In return, the White House granted clemency to five Iranians who had been convicted or charged with nonviolent offenses.
As part of the deal, the U.S. also transferred $6 billion in frozen Iran oil proceeds, blocked in South Korean banks due to U.S. sanctions, to a Qatari bank, making the money available to Iran for a “very limited category of humanitarian transactions,” a senior administration official said when the deal was announced.
The move was met with blowback from both sides of the aisle.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said after the deal that Iran will spend the money “wherever we need it,” though the Biden administration underscored that the funds are subject to U.S. oversight and restricted in their possible use.
Since Saturday’s attack, the White House has batted back claims that the prisoner exchange deal and the funds transfer are linked to Hamas’s recent move, and administration officials have said no money has been spent from that account.
“Let’s be clear: the deal to bring U.S. citizens home from Iran has nothing to do with the horrific attack on Israel. Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine. Anything to the contrary is false,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a Saturday statement.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday underscored on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “as of now, not a single dollar has been spent from that account.” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson and others have been emphasizing the same.
“These restricted funds cannot go to Iran — it can only be used for future humanitarian-related purposes. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and misleading,” said Brian Nelson, the Treasury’s undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Blinken stressed that the funds were not U.S. taxpayer dollars, and they were moved so Iran could access them “more easily” for those limited humanitarian purposes.
“It’s very unfortunate that some are playing politics at a time when so many lives have been lost and Israel remains under attack,” Blinken said.
Despite the administration’s pushback, GOP presidential candidates have sought to seize on the incident to knock the Biden administration over foreign policy as they condemn the deadly attack.
Former Vice President Mike Pence said the administration’s policies — which he described as Biden’s “kowtowing” — have “set the conditions” for the Hamas attacks.
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley knocked Blinken as “irresponsible” for his insistence that “the $6 billion doesn’t weigh in here,” appearing on-air Sunday after Blinken on “Meet the Press.”
“I mean, let’s be honest with the American people and understand that Hamas knows and Iran knows they’re moving money around as we speak because they know $6 billion is going to be released. That’s the reality,” Haley said.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said of the attacks that “this is the Biden $6 billion ransom payment at work.”
“America’s broken foreign policy establishment knew they were funding Hamas & went ahead with it anyway. The unprecedented $6BN in ransom paid to Iran last month worsened it: our taxpayer dollars are funding Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah,” entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum stressed that the U.S. “must remember who pays for this terrorism: Iran. An Iran that is billions of dollars wealthier thanks to Joe Biden.”
The knocks against Biden from the GOP field come as the 2024 cycle heats up. Biden and Trump are the clear front-runners of the race, setting the stage for a possible rematch of their 2020 contest. Trump boasts a significant lead over his fellow Republican contenders, leaving them to scramble to stand out from the crowd and battle to narrow the former president’s edge.
Some of the GOP White House hopefuls who made the party’s first and second debates in recent months — with the exception of Trump, who skipped both events — sparred among themselves over foreign policy as they stood onstage together.
The events unfolding in Israel are “a reminder that foreign policy credentials, experience — don’t matter until they do,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. “And when they matter, they matter a lot.”
The moment highlights that a U.S. president has to be ready to handle any crisis at any time, Mackowiak said, and candidates with more foreign policy experience — like Haley and Pence — might have an advantage in the discourse.
“Passing the commander in chief test is a bit theoretical until you are commander in chief. But these kinds of moments can reveal the base of knowledge the candidates have, the real experience they have, the relationships they may have in a given region around the world, their own judgment,” Mackowiak said.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel argued over the weekend that the Hamas attack “is a great opportunity” for GOP presidential candidates to highlight their foreign policy differences with the Biden administration.
“I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates to contrast where Republicans have stood with Israel, time and time again, and Joe Biden has been weak,” McDaniel told Fox News. She also drew a connection between the attack and the $6 billion in funds.
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates blasted McDaniel’s remarks, underscoring the casualties of the conflict.
“While apparently some individuals like Ronna McDaniel consider this loss of life and pain a ‘great opportunity,’ most Americans see it as a horrific tragedy,” Bates said. “No one can ever welcome this kind of hideous behavior or try to divide our country when we need to be united.”
