Senator Tim Scott (R-SC). (Photo: Screenshot)

More than two dozen Republican Senators on Friday sent a letter to top Biden administration officials challenging their decision to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian assets to secure the release of five Americans held by the Islamic Republic.

“When the Obama administration released $400 million in liquidated assets to Iran in 2016, we warned that this dangerous precedent would put a price on American lives,” the 26 lawmakers wrote to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen. “Seven years later, the current administration is providing a ransom payment worth at least 15 times that amount to the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, in yet another violation of the United States’ long-standing ‘no concessions’ policy.”

The State Department announced the deal last week after Iran moved the prisoners to house arrest as the first stage of securing their release. Blinken said at a press conference that Iran was not receiving sanctions relief under the deal and that the rogue regime could only use the unlocked funds for humanitarian purposes.

“Iran will not be receiving any sanctions relief,” Blinken said. “And in any instance where we would engage in such efforts to bring Americans home from Iran, Iran’s own funds would be used and transferred to restricted accounts such that the monies can only be used for humanitarian purposes, which, as you know, is permitted under our sanctions.  There’s an exemption for humanitarian that’s there from the start.”

According to press reports, the money will be transferred from South Korea, where it had been frozen, to banks in Qatar. The prisoner release could be completed by mid-September.

Friday’s letter, which was led by Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and James Risch (R-ID), poses a series of questions to the Biden administration about some of the claims that Blinken and others have made about the deal.

“Financial assets are fungible,” the letter says. “How can your departments guarantee that the funds will only be used for humanitarian purposes and will not free up additional resources that the Iranian regime can use to support terrorist networks and weapons proliferation, or increase its nuclear enrichment activities?”

The deal has also raised concerns among critics that the Biden administration could be pursuing an informal “understanding” with Iran on its nuclear program that might allow the administration to avoid congressional scrutiny under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act.

“We are also worried that your administration is attempting to sidestep Congress and pursue other pathways to financially compensate Iran in an attempt to renegotiate a successor to the ill-fated 2015 nuclear deal,” the Republican senators wrote. “Any agreement with the Iranian regime that entails financial reward for malign behavior is wholly unacceptable.”

The Biden administration has sought to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, under which Iran received large-scale sanctions relief in exchange for agreeing to temporary restrictions on its nuclear program. Former US President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the agreement in 2018.

The Biden administration has insisted that prisoner negotiations with Iran are a separate and unrelated diplomatic track from both the nuclear file and US efforts to deter Iran’s malign activities in the Middle East and beyond — such as its military support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“These are entirely separate tracks,” Blinken said last week. “We focused on getting our people home, but we continue to take strong action against Iran’s other activities that we and so many other countries profoundly object to.”