BOSTON, MA—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, yesterday joined The Ingraham Angle on Fox News to discuss the failures of the Biden Administration that have emboldened Iran and Hamas in the terror attack against Israel.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the Biden Administration’s initial failure to support Israel’s right to defend itself: “I’ve been concerned initially about how this Administration has handled it. I mean, [the] first communications out of this Biden Administration were that the Israelis should not retaliate. Then, Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken says he wants a ceasefire. What [President Joe] Biden finally came out and said, a few days too late, is that he acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself. He didn’t say that the United States should go to war on Israel’s behalf, but he acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself, and Israel has imminent capability to deal with Hamas. We just need to stand back and give them the moral support to deal with this, give them the headroom to deal with Hamas.”
Hagerty on how the U.S. should support Israel and sanction Iran: “We should go back to the policies that were working. I served in the previous Administration. President [Donald] Trump saw right through the fallacies of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] and pulled us out of the flawed Iran deal. He did that at a time when we really began to exert immense pressure on the Iranian regime. You recall the pallets of cash that [then-President Barack] Obama sent over, but those pallets of cash burnt through. My job as Ambassador to Japan was [to] get the Japanese to stop buying Iranian crude [oil]. We did this around the world. We brought Iran almost to its knees. That choked off Hamas, it choked off Hezbollah—you saw news reports back during the Trump Administration that they were going broke. That’s exactly what we need to revert to doing: imposing [sanctions], snapping back every sanction that’s in place that could be snapped back, imposing massive economic sanctions on Iran because Iran is the river of terror that flows through the region, and they’re supporting these proxies like Hamas that have created so much damage.”
Hagerty on the Biden Administration’s appeasement of Iran through compromised Robert Malley: “[U.S. Special Envoy to Iran Robert] Malley’s security clearances have been pulled. He’s under FBI investigation. He’s part of the Iranian influence regime that’s in the State Department at DOD [Department of Defense]. The numbers I’ve seen are up to $80 billion, Laura, of sanctions relief that he basically allowed by not enforcing the sanctions on illegal Iranian oil sales, another $10 billion that were okayed from Iraq to go to Iran. The $6 billion that everybody’s focused on right now is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve enriched them and the results of this is the terror that you’ve seen unfold in Israel.”
###