Mast: US Should Give Frozen Assets to Israel, Ukraine

The United States should take the assets it has seized from Iran and Russia and give it to the Ukrainian and Israeli governments, Rep. Brian Mast told Newsmax Saturday.

"In my opinion, every bit of those seized assets should slap Iran in the face," the Florida Republican, wearing an Israeli military uniform in support of the U.S. ally's fight against Hamas, told Newsmax's "America Right Now" in a pre-recorded interview airing Saturday.

"Take every bit, give it to Israel to put into the fight against Iran, against all of these terrorists to destroy them, and to slap them in the face."

He added that the "exact same thing" should be done for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, calling for "all of those frozen Russian assets" to be "taken instead out of the American treasury, unfrozen, and given to the Ukrainians to slap the Russians."

His comments come after Secretary of State Antony Blinken would not link Iran directly to the Hamas attack, but still conceded that it "wouldn't be Hamas without the support over many, many years from Iran."

"When it comes to this specific attack in this moment, we don't have direct evidence that Iran was involved in the attack either in planning it or carrying it out, but that could change," he said.

"The damage has been done," Mast said. "Let's talk about the damage and let's talk about the opportunity as well. So number one, yes, it's an acknowledgement of their involvement that they're withdrawing that $6 billion in exchange for hostages. But let's take that a step further. Secretary Blinken spoke very briefly, tried to pass it by."

Hamas, he added, used a massive rocket barrage, with weapons and funding coming from Iran.

"So yes, absolutely, they were involved in providing the weaponry for that attack," Mast said. "Let's talk about the opportunity briefly and say this $6 billion as part of it. There is so much beyond that dating back to 1979 with Iran right up till this very moment."

Mast also called for a stronger U.S. response to the Hamas assault on Israel.

"We know that Americans were killed," he said. "We know that Americans have been captured. There should be every expectation that America sends Americans to rescue American hostages and to provide retribution for those who killed Americans. That should be the expectation, number one. "

The United States has the "most capable" assets in the region to go to Israel and work along with its operations, Mast added.

"The sheer scope of the number of hostages that exists right now really precipitates the need to have American military hostage rescue teams, probably FBI hostage rescue teams, Israeli hostage rescue teams, and others," said Mast. "Just understand that the sheer level of coordination that has to take place in this kind of scenario is why will this be a long, drawn-out affair."

Mast added that he was a U.S. Army bomb technician, and stressed that nobody knows if there are "one or 50 bombs in each of the hundreds of miles of tunnels that exist there."

"You don't know if they're in a building, and if that building is rigged to blow up or if there's snipers outside of it, or how many you know terrorist fighters are there or the effort that it takes to get to that building," he said. "The list goes on and on. It's a very dangerous situation, with so many so many variables to root out this type of urban combat."

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