The United States made at least two separate payments to the Iranian government via wire transfer within the last 14 months, a Treasury Department spokesman confirmed Saturday, contradicting explanations from President Barack Obama that such payments were impossible.
Responding to questions at an Aug. 4 press conference about a $400 million payment delivered in cash to the Iranian government, Obama said, “[T]he reason that we had to give them cash is precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions and we do not have a banking relationship with Iran that we couldn’t send them a check and we could not wire the money.”
But a Treasury Department spokesman acknowledged on Saturday that on at least two occasions, the U.S. did make payments to the Iranian government via wire transfer.
In July 2015, the same month in which the U.S., Iran and other countries announced a landmark nuclear agreement, the U.S. government paid the Islamic republic approximately $848,000. That payment settled a claim over architectural drawings and fossils that are now housed in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and Iran’s Ministry of Environment, respectively. Then, in April 2016, the U.S. wired Iran approximately $9 million to remove 32 metric tons of its heavy water, which is used to produce plutonium and can aid in the making of nuclear weapons.
While some sanctions relating to Iran’s nuclear program were lifted with the implementation of the nuclear agreement, others imposed over the Islamic Republic’s human rights policies and support for terrorist organizations remain in effect. The July 2015 wire transfer was made while the full weight of sanctions against Iran were intact, while the April 2016 payment for heavy water was made after the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions.
The Treasury Department spokesman explained that the lifting of those sanctions allowed Iran “to gain incremental access to the international financial system, which opened up more options for executing transactions, such as the heavy water transaction” that occurred in April 2016. The spokesman declined to offer an explanation as to why the July 2015 payment was possible despite the full array of sanctions in place at the time.
That $400 million cash payment that Obama said could not have been delivered any other way was part of a larger $1.7 billion settlement with Iran, the remainder of which was also delivered in cash. The $400 million, paid in January to settle a decades-old dispute over military equipment order by the late shah of Iran, was sent through intermediary central banks in Europe, who then delivered pallets of euros, Swiss francs and other currencies to Tehran.
Source: Politico | Louis Nelson
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