I watched as much as I had time for of President Biden’s “strong statement of support” for Israel, in which he pronounced Hamas to be the most depraved brand of evil . . . but did not mention the word Iran — which arms, trains, and funds that evil — much less mention his own willful material support to Iran while, he knows, it materially supports the most depraved brand of evil that is Hamas.

Biden did not take any questions as he is obviously not up to taking questions even from a press corps that protects him — and even if he were up to it, who could possibly explain our condemn-Hamas-support-Iran policy? The task of answering questions was left to Jake Sullivan, the national-security adviser.

During the time I watched, Sullivan mainly got softballs, but he was asked about Iran and hewed to the party line: Yes, Iran “historically” supports Hamas, and yes, the administration is aware of reports that Iran was deeply involved in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, but even though the administration has been scouring months of intelligence reporting, the White House is unable to “confirm” Iran’s role — but it’ll get back to us if it hears anything.

Understand, this is tantamount to saying: “We knew Iran would almost certainly use any increased revenue to support Hamas’s jihadist operations, but we’ve worked to increase its revenues anyway; and we can’t say we’d be surprised to learn that Iran played the dominant role in the October 7 attack that’s been outlined in the reporting, but we’re not in a position to say it surely did so — or at least to publicly admit that it surely did so.”

Finally, after Sullivan was done parroting Biden’s spiel about how evil Hamas is, Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News asked him whether, given what he’d said about Iran’s historical support for Hamas and Hamas’s incorrigible evil, the administration had taken or would be taking any steps to freeze the $6 billion it has just cause to be released to Qatar for Iran’s benefit.

Sullivan proceeded, twice for emphasis, to not answer the question. Instead, with affected indignation, he assured the public that the Biden administration had its eye on that money and that there was no indication that Iran had withdrawn any of it.

Of course, as we’ve pointed out (see, e.g., here and here), that is such nonsense it insults the intelligence. Money being fungible, if Iran knows it has access to the money held by its ally Qatar (which, like Iran, funds Hamas), it can simply divert to terror support other funds at its disposal — of which there is much thanks to Biden’s easing of sanctions — and then draw on the funds parked with the Qataris for ostensibly humanitarian or other governmental purposes.

What Sullivan was not asked, though, at least while I was watching, is if there is even any mechanism in place for the administration to freeze, seize, or repurpose the $6 billion.

As I have explained, I highly doubt Biden has that capability at this late point. The administration’s leverage was its ability to prevent the funds from being unfrozen in South Korea and transferred to Qatar. Not only did Biden sign a formal waiver to let that transfer happen; Iran then performed its end of the sordid bargain by releasing hostages — so close in time to the release of the funds that it was sure to highlight for the world that if you take Americans hostage, as Hamas has now done, the Americans will pay billions. With the ransom already paid by transfer to Iran’s ally Qatar, and the hostages already 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?

I am betting there is no such mechanism. Instead of calling for the administration to freeze the funds, could we get an answer from the White House about whether it actually has the legal authority to freeze or reclaim the funds? If, as I suspect, it has no such authority, we could then ask why not — and why Biden made $6 billion available to the world’s leading state sponsor of anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorism with no strings attached that might affect Iran’s behavior. And if, as seems unlikely, the administration does have a legal way to reclaim the funds, we could then ask why it hasn’t done so.