President Joe Biden is facing severe criticism for not putting enough pressure on Iran to get the American hostages being held by Hamas freed.
Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) disagreed with reports that state Biden played a key role in negotiating the hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas. He said that if the President weren’t so weak, the American hostages would have been released by now.
“Israel exerted so much pressure that Hamas was willing to take a break. And, of course, they got 150 Palestinian prisoners from Israel as well,” Fallon said. “So, they got that, and they got the pause that they needed. Biden, you know what they say: even small successes like this have a thousand fathers and defeat an orphan. If Joe Biden was so crucial, why aren’t any Americans being freed right now? I think that’s very telling.”
50 of the 240 hostages, including 13 Israeli civilians and 12 Thai nationals, are expected to be released in exchange for a pause in fighting with Israel. Biden boasted about the deal that followed negotiations between U.S., Israeli, Qatari, and Egyptian officials. Hamas agreed to release the hostages over the next three days.
However, on Saturday, the terrorist group announced its refusal to hold up its end of the deal.
In addition, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) also criticized Biden’s lack of leadership role, arguing that the President needs to put economic pressure on Hamas financier Iran in order for the hostages to be released. Rather, Biden has allowed a sanctions waiver so Iran can get billions in energy sales to Iraq.
“Instead of fighting to get Americans back, what’s this President do? Just recently, he gave the okay for Iraq to buy $10 billion worth of energy from Iran, $10 billion. And so, look, the United States has at least economic — it could put economic pressure on Hamas’ major benefactor, Iran, and start to starve them of the cash that they need to sustain Hamas and Hezbollah and all of those other terrorist activities. Still, they refuse to do that,” Gimenez said. “And so, it’s up to the Israelis to do the tasks that America really needs to do for itself or at least in conjunction with Israel. And so, again, this President, all he shows is weakness. And, frankly, I have no faith in his ability to free those American hostages. Let’s see what happens in the future.”