Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas ripped President Joe Biden over releasing $6 billion to Iran as part of a prisoner swap Wednesday.

The Biden administration reached an agreement for five Americans being held by the Iranian government in exchange for $6 billion in oil revenue currently frozen in South Korea on Aug. 10, The New York Times reported. Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have blasted the deal as a “ransom” for the Americans held in Iran. (RELATED: ‘Sheer Insanity’: Former Trump Official Says Biden Energy Policy Aiding ‘The Worst Actors In The World’)

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“While I’m grateful that we are going to have those Americans back home with their families, I feel very badly for the Americans in the future who are going to be taken hostage by countries like Iran, they understand that hostage taking pays, and the price is going up,” Cotton told Fox News host John Roberts. “This is several orders of magnitude more than Barack Obama’s ransom payment for American hostages. The Ayatollahs learn if they take Americans hostage, as they did shortly after Barack Obama paid ransom, they get even more money. This time to the tune of $6 billion to fund their campaign of terrorism against Americans and our troops and our friends like Israel in the region.”

Cotton also ripped Biden for seeking to placate Iran after the deal then-President Barack Obama made in 2015 was terminated by then-President Donald Trump in May 2018. The 2015 agreement was controversial, with critics of the deal claiming it “paved the road” for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

“Joe Biden has made this deal with Iran because he’s desperate to do anything to get back into Iran’s good graces, because he does not want Iran to go for a nuclear breakout before the election next year, he doesn’t want Iran to take even more hostages, which of course the deal will encourage, and he wants to lower the temperature on the attacks on Americans in the Middle East, but all this is going to do is fund and encourage more aggression from Iran,” Cotton said.

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