Huckabee to Newsmax: What Happened to Israeli Intel?

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on Saturday questioned Israel's intelligence unit after Hamas' surprise attack.

"This clearly caught the Israelis off guard," Huckabee said.

"I think they're going to have to do some assessment of what broke down in their intelligence gathering. Usually, they are about the best in the world — having phenomenal intelligence — and they seem to be completely rocked on their heels by it — totally unprepared for what happened. Which is exactly what happened to them in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War then."

"I will say," Huckabee continued, "thank goodness that both [Secretary of State] Antony Blinken and the president — [they] made a very clear unequivocal statement of support for Israel after this attack started today. But it does not diminish the fact that they let Iran have $6 billion in assets."

"Now Iran will say, Well, we didn't use it for that purpose." Huckabee added. "Let there be no mistake. Iran is funding this."

Shortly after the attack, Undersecretary Brian Nelson condemned any speculation that the $6 billion in unfrozen assets Iran received could somehow be used to fund a terrorism plot.

"These restricted funds cannot go to Iran — it can only be used for future humanitarian-related purposes," Nelson wrote on Twitter. "Any suggestion to the contrary is false and misleading."

But while Nelson suggests that it's somehow impossible for humanitarian aid to be used as a guise for geostrategic gain, the U.S. has a known history, according to former State Department official Mike Benz, of using "humanitarian' funds" to support paramilitary operations.

Circa 2012, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a known companion of the CIA, sent young people to Cuba to promote anti-Raul Castro sentiment under the guise of an HIV prevention workshop.

During the time of the Afghanistan war, the CIA in 2011 used a fake vaccine program in Abbottabad, Pakistan, to locate Osama bin Laden.

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