The Biden administration has an "appeasement-first policy toward Iran" and needs to hit them "with sanctions right now" and take "down their foreign reserves so they can't afford to be able to fund this terrorism around the world," said Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb.
"Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism. And yet we have allowed them to have oil money flow to them. I think it was previously mentioned $100 billion. That's the number I've seen as well," Ricketts told Newsmax's "National Report."
"And it's important to contrast this with the last administration. The Trump administration brought Iran's foreign reserves down from $122.5 billion … to $4 billion. When that happened, Iran didn't have the money to give to Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis. But now this administration and their naive thinking that we can just give Iran a bunch of money and they're going to be nice to us, is completely misguided. And so, it's encouraged Iran to continue funding these terrorist groups and now blatantly attacking our ally Israel, because they feel we will not respond.
"This is the problem when you have this weakness being projected by our administration, and what we need to do is show strength to dictators like Ali Khamenei and hit them hard," he added.
Ricketts had ideas for what should come next.
"And we can start by hitting him with sanctions right now and taking down their foreign reserves so they can't afford to be able to fund this terrorism around the world. And of course, we also have to support Israel when they strike back or retaliate against Iran for this aggression."
Israel's ground incursion into Lebanon to battle Hezbollah militants left eight Israeli soldiers dead Wednesday, while the region braced for further escalation as Israel vowed to retaliate for Iran's ballistic missile attack a day earlier.
The Israeli military said the soldiers were killed in two separate attacks, without elaborating. The assaults were among the deadliest against Israeli forces in months.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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