Biden Spox Kirby Hits Back at Critics of Prisoner Deal — Points Out $6 Billion Account Created Under Trump

White House National Security Spokesman John Kirby hit back at critics of a new prisoner deal, and pointed out the $6 billion account at the center of it was created under then-President Donald Trump’s watch.

The U.S. reached a deal to free five prisoners — three of whom have been identified as Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi, and Morad Tahbaz — in exchange for access to $6 billion in Iranian oil assets and the freeing of several Iranians imprisoned for violating sanctions. Many Biden opponents have slammed the deal.

On Friday morning’s edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Kirby headed off some of those criticisms — particularly the $6 billion account, which he said can only be used for humanitarian purposes, and was created under Trump:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Admiral, tell us about this deal.

ADM. JOHN KIRBY: Well, so we’re still negotiating the deal, Joe. So we’re being a little bit careful about how much we put out in the public space. We’re glad that these five Americans are now out of Evin Prison. That’s a good thing. It’s a good first step. There’s a lot more steps to come here.

Now, I’ve seen the speculation and the criticism about this $6 billion. I think you characterize it exactly right. And I think it’s important to remember, again, without getting too far ahead of where we are in the negotiating process, that what we’re talking about here are Iranian funds that were in a South Korean account that they couldn’t access for a lot of technical reasons. This was an account set up by the previous administration. They did it with South Korea and seven other countries under what’s called a significant reduction exception program. It was a way to discourage countries from importing Iranian oil.

Now, the Iranians can’t get, couldn’t get that account unfrozen. They couldn’t get access to that money. So what we’re talking about doing is moving that account to a country like Qatar where they can get access to it, but only for discreet, limited, and narrow humanitarian purposes. And the United States and Qatar and aid organizations will have the right to veto any withdrawal request to make sure that it’s going to the Iranian people and not to the regime.

The regime won’t get a dime of this. It’s all designed for food, medicine, medical equipment for the Iranian people. And again, this is a, this is a move that would make it accessible to them.

Watch above via MSNBC’s Morning Joe.