Republican presidential candidates seized on the Hamas attacks on Israel on Saturday to criticize President Joe Biden, whom they sought to cast as enabling the offensive by Palestinian militants.

Several primary contenders argued that there was a connection between the surprise assault and a recent hostage release deal between the Biden administration and Iran, a longtime backer of Hamas.

Former President Donald Trump, who has frequently presented himself as a unflinching ally of Israel and who moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, blamed Biden for the conflict.

While campaigning Saturday in Waterloo, Iowa, he said the attacks had occurred because “we are perceived as being weak and ineffective, with a really weak leader.”

On several occasions, Trump went further, saying that the hostage deal was a catalyst of the attacks: “The war happened for two reasons,” he said. “The United States is giving — and gave to Iran — $6 billion over hostages.”

In exchange for the release of five Americans held in Tehran, the Biden administration agreed in August to free up $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil revenue funds for humanitarian purposes. The administration has emphasized that the money could be used only for “food, medicine, medical equipment that would not have a dual military use.”

Trump, the GOP front-runner, was not alone in assailing Biden, as the entire Republican field weighed in on the attacks on Saturday.

In a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida faulted the Biden administration for its foreign policy decisions in the Middle East.

“Iran has helped fund this war against Israel, and Joe Biden’s policies that have gone easy on Iran has helped to fill their coffers,” he said. “Israel is now paying the price for those policies.”

Several times on the campaign trial Saturday, DeSantis invoked the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including during a stop in Keosauqua, Iowa.

“This is a 9/11-style attack for their country,” he said of Israel. “And they need to root Hamas out once and for all.”

A spokesperson for the Biden campaign directed questions about Saturday’s attacks to the National Security Council, which disputed GOP candidates’ claims that there was a connection between the release of the funds and the attacks.

“Not a single cent from these funds has been spent, and when it is spent, it can only be spent on things like food and medicine for the Iranian people,” Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a statement. “These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today, and this is not the time to spread disinformation.”

The Treasury Department and the State Department also pushed back on Republican efforts to link the two.