Dailymail.com
Five American citizens being held hostage by Iran will be released in return for the unfreezing of $6 billion held in South Korean banks, the U.S. government announced on Monday – enraging Biden administration critics, particular as the timing coincided with the anniversary of 9/11.
The five U.S. hostages – businessmen Siamak Namazi, 51, and Emad Shargi, 58; environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, 67; and two anonymous individuals – will be freed once the money has been transferred from South Korea to an intermediary, Qatar, and then on to Iran.
Five Iranian citizens held in the U.S. will also be released.
The deal has been months in the works and was long expected, but Republicans reacted with fury – with Donald Trump saying the money would pay for terrorism and calling Biden an ‘incompetent fool’, and Ron DeSantis accusing Biden of ‘selling out on America’.
Trump said he had never paid to release any hostages, and added: ‘This incompetent FOOL is absolutely destroying America. He had the audacity to announce this terrible deal today, September 11th.’
His Republican rival for the presidency, DeSantis, said: ‘This deal bankrolls nuclear ambitions, hostage takers, and extremists who hate America.’
Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a Republican representing Texas, said he was ‘deeply concerned’ by the move, and called the timing of the announcement ‘particularly egregious’.