Hillel Neuer appeared on Fox Business with Maria Bartiromo to discuss Israel’s recent military successes against Iran, the urgent threat posed by Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the importance of targeting the regime’s finances to prevent further regional and global destabilization.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: Now is UN Watch Executive Director, Hillel Neuer. Hillel, good to see you. What’s your reaction to all of this?
Hillel Neuer: Look, these are unprecedented battles that we’re seeing. It’s between a democracy and the world’s leading sponsor of terror. This is of an epic nature. It is astonishing to see what Israel was able to achieve in just a few days. Israel is a tiny country the size of New Jersey, barely 10 million people. Iran is 10 times the population, 80 times the size. They encircled Israel with a ring of fire.
Thanks to God, Hamas and Hezbollah were crushed. Assad fell. Iran lost its proxies. Israel took out their air defenses and now controls the skies. So we’re in a completely different place. It’s a night-and-day change from what the situation looked like a year and a half ago.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: What about the more significant nuclear site, which is underground—Fordow—which is being talked about so much? I mean, for that, won’t Israel need the U.S. help? And do you expect that is actually attainable—to get to that site without massive implications and danger?
Hillel Neuer: Well, at the end of the day, we have to compare one danger with another. The current danger is that the Islamic Republic of Iran was getting stronger and stronger. We know that they were trying to assassinate opponents in Europe, where I am, and even in the United States. In New York, they tried to assassinate Masih Alinejad several times. They were convicted for it.
So to give this terrorist regime a nuclear weapon is something that President Trump rightly said just won’t fly. This is not going to happen. And clearly, it is a big challenge to take out this facility. It’s all buried, you know, hundreds of yards underground. But we believe that bunker busters could do it. If Israel can do it, they should be allowed to do it themselves—whether through bombing or other creative means that they’ve shown in comparable situations.
But if not, America will have to decide if they want to allow a terrorist regime that threatens any critic anywhere in the world. We see they have ballistic missiles that can go thousands of miles. Do we want to allow this regime the kind of nuclear blackmail that North Korea has? And if not, then the United States will have to make its own decision based on its own interests.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: This is a decision of President Trump, whether or not the United States gets further into this, Hillel. But I guess—what do you think this looks like later?
I mean, President Trump was so smart to make his first international trip to the Middle East to strengthen relations there between the United States and the regional members. They all have, you know, major issues with Iran. I mean, the free world understands what Iran has been doing. So what do you think this looks like on the other side of this?
Hillel Neuer: You’re right. There’s no question that the reason that there are the Abraham Accords—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, all of this with the blessing of the much larger neighboring Saudi Arabia—the reason that they made peace with Israel, a large part of it is the fear of the Iranian terror state and the knowledge that Israel is a vital ally.
I think we are at a critical turning point. We have the chance to defeat the main sponsor of war and terrorism in the region and around the world. Iran is allied with America’s neighbors. Venezuela, Cuba, and the other anti-American regimes in the Americas are fully allied with Iran.
So this is really a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Israel has defeated their entire air defense. The skies are open, and the opportunity is there to eliminate their nuclear weapon. We mustn’t miss this chance. Future generations will never forgive us.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: I’m wondering if there are also efforts here to get at the money that Iran has. I’m getting a text from one source telling me that Israeli-linked hacker group Predatory Sparrow wiped out 95% of assets on Iran’s crypto exchange, which is interesting. The wallet balances plunged from $1.8 billion to just $100 million. I guess that’s an important point as well.
We’re looking to see what we can get in terms of more information on this. Hillel, but how significant do you think that crypto and the financial angle is, in terms of Iran having been able to sell oil on the black market for so many years under the Biden administration?
Hillel Neuer: Look, the Biden administration sent pallets of cash—$400 million in cash—and then another $1.3 billion to the regime. You couldn’t make this up. I think it was about nine years ago. They handed pallets of cash to the regime. They said “it’s a risk, but we think it’s okay.” And what did they do with the money?
They completely took over Yemen with the Houthis. They completely took over Lebanon with Hezbollah. Syria, Iraq—they dominated, colonized, subjugated the entire region. Destroyed those countries. Lebanon is on the brink of collapse. Yemen is a failed state. This is what Iran did. This isn’t even with the nuclear weapon—this is what they did with the cash we gave them.
So there’s no question that we can get to their cash if we can reimpose the crippling sanctions that Trump did in the first administration—that chokes them off and stops the terror.
Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: All right, we’ll be certainly watching that angle as well. Hillel, thanks very much for weighing in.
