John Kirby Snaps At Shannon Bream ‘Well Of Course’ Iran Was ‘Complicit’ In Hamas Attack On Israel

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby adopted an exasperated tone with Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream on the question of Iran’s involvement in the Hamas terror attack on Israel, a subject which has dogged the administration over the last week.

Kirby spoke about the attacks and the response from the United States to the brutal terror attack last week, in which Hamas militants targeted civilians for kidnapping and murder, beheading babies and executing hundreds and then displaying the corpses while celebrating.

Israel has since launched air strikes and bombing after warning residents in Gaza ahead of time to get out of the areas — an effort at minimizing civilian casualties that has been repeatedly stymied by Hamas.

The Wall Street Journal published an article that was attacked by Democrats and other media outlets in which they established a link between Iran’s funding of Hamas terror and the attack. That article produced a slew of questions for the White House about the $6 billion sent to Iran by the Biden administration, and on Sunday, Bream asked Kirby about it.

When Bream brought it up, Kirby took on an irritated air before responding, “Well, of course, Iran is broadly complicit here. And of course, the resourcing and training they’ve given to Hamas has obviously helped Hamas function and be able to conduct the terrorist attacks that they have been able to conduct.”

He then insisted the administration is holding Iran accountable, repeatedly said Iran has not touched the money while refusing to say they are unable to touch it, dismissed the fungibility of funds argument on the grounds that Iran wouldn’t bother to feed their hungry anyway, and tried to blame the Donald Trump administration for the whole thing.

BREAM: So let’s talk about Iran’s involvement. You know, The Wall Street Journal had reporting there was direct involvement with this, saying “Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday.” They said, they cite numerous defense sources. They talk about multiple meetings in Beirut. The Washington Post says this: “Even if you don’t see the direct link yet,” they quote a Western intelligence official saying “if you train people on how to use weapons, you expect them to eventually use them.” Does the White House need a direct link on this specific attack to hold Iran in some way accountable?

KIRBY: Well, of course, Iran is broadly complicit here. And of course, the resourcing and training they’ve given to Hamas has obviously helped Hamas function and be able to conduct the terrorist attacks that they have been able to conduct. We have held Iran accountable. There have, the attacks on our troops in Iraq and Syria have greatly decreased because of our retaliatory strikes. There’s the longest truce in Yemen now in place, saving literally tens of thousands of Yemeni lives. We have added military capabilities into the Gulf region, additional ships, a different aircraft. Now we’re bolstering our military presence in the Eastern Med. There should be no anybody mistaking the fact that we haven’t held, continue to hold Iran accountable. Think about the support they’re giving to Russia and Ukraine and the additional sanctions that we put on them for sending drone technology. So we’re course, we’re holding them accountable. Now, Shannon, we’re looking specifically at the intel stream as much as we can. That work hasn’t happened. Or, sorry, it hasn’t stopped. We just haven’t seen anything in the intel that we’ve been looking at that directly points to specific participation by Iran in these attacks. It doesn’t mean we aren’t still looking for it, just haven’t found it. I’ve seen the press reporting. We’re not able to corroborate that.

BREAM: So when you say holding them accountable, you know the pushback you’re going to get on that. A lot of people out there say, well, we unfreeze $6 billion of their money, but giving them access to that, that doesn’t look like we’re punishing them. And there are questions about whether we can even as there’s been talk of, quote, quietly freezing it, if we can do that. Andy McCarthy, one of our colleagues writing over at National Review, says “with the ransom already paid and the hostages released, what legal mechanism does the administration have to compel Qatar to return the funds to U.S. control such that they could be frozen, redirected, and otherwise kept out of Tehran’s coffers?” He says, “Can you do that?” Is there actually a string attached somewhere? And if not, why not? Why would we open up $6 billion to them without some kind of strings to pull it back, if in a situation like this?

KIRBY: So not a dime has been spent.

BREAM: Correct.

KIRBY: Not a dime has been accessed. The Iranian regime never gets it. The money was never frozen when it was in South Korea any more than it was frozen when it got to Qatar. And it was part of a series of accounts set up by the Trump administration. There was no hue and cry back then when Secretary Pompeo announced these accounts and that the Iranians spent down billions of dollars from the other accounts for what was supposed to be humanitarian purposes4. But we don’t really know. None of that. We can’t account for that. I can only account for that 6 billion. And it’s all still in Qatar. None of it has been accessed. And we’re watching it like a hawk.

BREAM: Will they ever be able to access it. Is it truly that you can rephrase it in essence or whatever terminology you’d like to use so they don’t have access to it?

KIRBY: They have not accessed it. We are watching it.

BREAM: We know that, but can they?

KIRBY: We’re watching it like a hawk. Shannon, I’m telling you that we are keeping tabs on every single dime of that. None of it is accessed by the Iranians. And even if it was, even if it was, it would go to vendors that we approve to buy food, water, medicine, and ship it in to Iran right to the Iranian people, through humanitarian aid organizations. The regime never, never sees it.

BREAM: But fair to say that it relieves other financial obligations for them if they know that they can get help on these other fronts through money coming in. I mean, the State Department tells us that Iran gives $100 billion a year in support to Palestinian terror groups.

KIRBY: This is the fungibility argument, which is also a false argument, too. It’s not like the Iranians were sitting around saying, hmm, well, we have $6 billion that we can free up to go fund terrorists and not feed our, and we don’t have to worry about feeding our people. They never were worried about feeding their people. They were never worried about actual humanitarian assistance to their own population. And again, they don’t have any access to it. The other argument is that the support to terrorists — that is, been long-standing, under previous administrations as well.

BREAM: So why make it any easier for them?

KIRBY: We haven’t made it easier, Shannon. We have in this administration alone, just in the two and a half years the president’s been in office, 400 entities sanctioned for a range of reasons, 30, 30 additional sanction regimes and 300 entities just in the last year alone. And again, we’ve increased our military presence. This idea that we’re just somehow turning a blind eye, whistling past the graveyard as Iran supports terrorist networks is just not true.

Watch the clip above, via Fox News Sunday.