Obama Gave Iran Access to US Financial System?

At a time when US has slammed sanction on Iran over its nuclear establishments and withdrew itself from the Iran deal, the revelation of Iran’s access to US financial system, as allowed during Barrack Obama’s tenure has stormed the administrative and political corridor in the US.

According to new revelation, the Obama administration gave Iran access to the US financial system as part of the Iran nuclear deal, despite knowing that such access would remain banned under terms of the controversial agreement, according to a report released by Republicans Senate claims.

The majority report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, says, “Officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal”. 

At the direction of the State Department, the Treasury Department has “granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system”, the report revealed. Though the conversion to dollars never took place. Majority of the Republicans opposed the Iran deal, from which President Donald Trump withdrew a month ago.

Republican Senator, Rob Portman said, “the Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran”.

The accusations by the Republicans were rejected by some officials who worked in the Obama administration and said Republicans are presenting the case as an attempt by Democrats to give much broader access to Iran in the US financial system.

According to Jarrett Blanc, who is the former State Department coordinator of the Iran deal, called the report “wildly overblown”, and said the license was never made public. He said, “This isn't just rehashing old fights, the administration and its Hill supporters are trying to make it harder for the government to do the hard, day-to-day work of making sanctions effective without pushing Allies and partners to find work around”.

US, Russia, China, Germany, Britain, and France signed a temporary deal in the year 2013 with the aim to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions in exchange of a rollback that would cripple the financial sanctions. After two years the countries signed a permanent deal, which went into effect from January 2016.

Again in February 2016, a special license was issued, which allowed Iran to convert nearly $5.7 billion worth of Iranian assets which was frozen in an Omani bank into dollars from Omani rials. Later the dollars were converted into euros.

A Senior State Department official said, “Such transactions are prohibited by U.S. sanctions that are still in place and which we were clear we would not be removing as part of the (Iran deal). Nevertheless, as a gesture of support for Iran’s getting access, we helped on this as we will on other cases”.

Last month after the Donald Trump administration pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran. Some nations started talks with Iran so that the agreement continues without the participation of US, though nothing has materialized as yet.