'Fox News Sunday' on August 13, 2023
Interview
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Good to see you, Shannon. Thanks.
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There's a fundamental misunderstanding about what's going on here. The money that's going from Korea to Iran is money from oil that Iran sold to Korea and Korea did not pay for that -- South Korea, sorry, because the sanctions that were imposed on the Trump administration.
And there were about a half dozen countries in that situation. Italy, India, a few others, all of those other countries under the Trump administration have already given Iran that money with no strings attached under a special payment system that was set up under the Trump administration. South Korea didn't pay that money for complicated reasons. And they're valid, they want to transfer it.
So money of this kind has already been transferred. This is money to pay for oil that was given to South Korea. This isn't some sort of frozen assets situation. So this type of money has already been transferred. Second, the deal has not been finalized. Qatar will control the money. So whatever the Mullah in Iran has to say about it, it will be controlled by Qatar, not by Iran. So that aspect of it makes sense. We're still waiting to see what the prisoner swap looks like and to finalize the deal. But there's a lot more detail here that I think isn't being understood.
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The Trump administration transferred billions of dollars from these other countries back to Iran, with no strings attached. And I don't hear anybody talking about that.
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But again, it's not as I just said, where were those real concerns during the Trump administration, when money from a bunch of other countries was being transferred to Iran, no strings attached, no prisoners returned?
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So it just doesn't seem like a legitimate complaint based on the facts of the certain -- facts of the situation.
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Right. And that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what this money is.
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OK, it's not a bounty because we're not paying the money. It's Iran's' money that was sitting in South Korea.
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So it's a bounty?
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I understand all that. But that's completely untrue, Undersecretary Pompeo, these other countries, I'm aware of Italy and India, there were a few others that hadn't found, money was transferred from them. Same situation where Iran had sold stuff to these countries, sanctions kicked in, money hadn't been paid. Under Secretary Pompeo, that money was transferred from those countries to Iran, no strings attached. Okay. So it is not a bounty and this factually incorrect what Secretary Pompeo is saying.
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Sure.
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Well, the Taliban awful, terrible, horrible on to any other expectation than that. I'd have to look at that specific report. I know there were a lot of again, frozen assets that we had in control that were actually Afghan money. I'm not sure about the actual U.S. taxpayer money going in. I'm extraordinarily reluctant to send that money. There is one caveat to that.
Afghan is -- Afghanistan is also going to humanitarian disaster right now. People are starving to death. They can't get access to health care. We're getting a lot of pressure internationally. What can the international community to do to stop that humanitarian disaster? And I suppose one answer is, you got the government, you got you got the Taliban leading you. This is where you're at. We can't help. But it is such a huge humanitarian disaster that I'd say it's worth at least looking at options, even though I don't think there are any particularly good options in this situation.
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It's an initial statement offer of what the Biden administration thinks we should fund. We'll see how that plays out going forward. The polling data I've seen, by the way is that well over 60% of people still think we should be doing what we should do, everything we can to help the Ukrainian people.
Look, Russia has engaged in a brutal invasion of Ukraine, you can see the pictures of how they're destroying cities, killing civilians. I think defending Ukraine is something that is in our interest and overwhelming majority of American people seem to agree with that.
As far as the other pieces are concerned, every supplemental that I've ever dealt with in my 27 years in Congress has been tied with one thing to another. But this is an opening negotiation. We'll see. I think there are critical needs. We'll see what the final package looks like. But I want to make it clear. I still support Ukraine. I think there's a bipartisan people. I wish you to ask Congressman McCaul this question, because I'm certain he would agree with me that this is something that we should be supporting. I know he's been an incredibly strong supporter of Ukraine has -- as has Chairman Mike Rogers, who's the chairman of my committee on Armed Services.
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Thank you, Shannon. Appreciate it.
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