President Barack Obama would have taken a "walk through glass on his knees" to keep the Iran nuclear deal alive, and the administration definitely game the country $400 million in foreign currency to get four American hostages out of jail, Sen. Lindsey Graham said, and he doesn't buy the administration's claims because he has "half a brain."
"I'm not claiming to have a whole brain, I'm in the Congress," the South Carolina lawmaker told CNN's "At This Hour With Berman and Bolduan" program. "But I'm telling you this, you'd have to be dumb as a rock to believe this is not connected."
With the money being sent in foreign currency, that means the United States went to overseas banks to appease the Iranians.
"There's nothing Obama won't do to appease the Iranians," Graham said. "He wants this nuclear deal to the point of being, I think, over the top about it, to be quite frankly putting us at risk. This guy, I think, would walk through glass on his knees to keep this deal in place. He gave the Iranians money to get the Americans out of jail. To think anything else is crazy."
Meanwhile, Iran has fired four missiles since signing off on the nuclear deal, and "we've done nothing about it," said Graham. "They captured our Navy sailors and held them in violation of international law. We've done nothing about it. The money continues to flow. They have three Americans in jail now that are being held, in my view, illegally, and we're doing nothing about it.
They don't want to disrupt this deal. If the Iranians make a demand to keep the deal intact and to get hostages back, we give in. To think anything else really is to ignore the relationship of the last two years."
According to the White House, the cash was the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement between the Obama administration and Iran over a failed arms deal signed just prior to the 1979 fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Graham said even if that is the case, Iran threw over the Shah, and it is the "most radical regime in the world and doesn't deserve anything."
The senator plans to introduce legislation to take sanctions relief away from Iran, based on the four missiles that were tested.
"Clearly the Obama administration is not going to do a damn thing towards the Ayatollah and his regime so we're going to fill in the vacuum in Congress," said Graham.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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