US top diplomat dismisses as “incorrect” reports Korea is sending Iran funds blocked by sanctions

US top diplomat dismisses as “incorrect” reports Korea is sending Iran funds blocked by sanctions
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani: Conservatives in Tehran did not like his latest comments on reviving the nuclear deal. / Fars News Agency.
By bne IntelIiNews March 11, 2021

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has dismissed as “incorrect” reports that South Korea is sending $1bn to Iran in a move to resolve a dispute over bank deposits that Tehran cannot access because of American sanctions.

“The report is incorrect,” Blinken said late on March 10, responding to a question from Representative Greg Steube, a Florida Republican. “Unless and until Iran comes back into compliance [with the 2015 nuclear deal], they won’t be getting that relief, and the report that you’re referring to is simply incorrect.”

The day after Blinken's remarks, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters: “We will not offer any unilateral gestures or incentives to induce the Iranians to come to the table. If the Iranians are under the impression that, absent any movement on their part to resume full compliance with the [nuclear deal], that we will offer favours or unilateral gestures, well that’s a misimpression,” 

There has been speculation that the US might give Seoul its blessing to wire the money—largely owed on historical oil deliveries—to Iran as a sign of goodwill in the Biden administration’s attempts to commence negotiations with Tehran on reviving the nuclear deal, which the Iranians have so far resisted, saying the US must lift economic sanctions on Iran first.

In late February, Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei said Abdolnaser Hemmati, governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), had reached preliminary agreements with the ambassadors of Japan and South Korea on releases of funds that have become blocked because of US sanctions. "He [Hemmati] has said that it seems that, in a first step, about $1 billion of foreign exchange resources of the Central Bank of Iran will be provided to us," Rabiei told a news conference streamed live on a government website.

“I hope that you stand firm on not allowing anything as long as they are acting as the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” Steube told Blinken during a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

Rouhani under fire

Separately, on March 11 Iranian media outlets reported that conservative political factions in Iran had expressed their firm opposition to an apparent move by moderate, pragmatic Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to support a step by step resumption of nuclear deal compliance by the US and Iran.

Rouhani told a cabinet meeting, televised live by the state broadcaster, on March 9: “We’re ready for full commitments in exchange for full commitments, or partial commitments in exchange for partial commitments.

“If you [the US] return [to the deal], you will experience better conditions and you’ll see it’s in the interests of all the people in the region.”

In the US on March 11, CNBC reported former US energy secretary Ernest Moniz as saying time was running out for Washington to engage in meaningful diplomacy with Iran on getting the nuclear deal back on track. The Iranian presidential election in June, in which analysts say hardliners, or principlists, are most likely to take over, could put nuclear talks into a “hiatus”, Moniz said.

The Wall Street Journal on the same day published an exclusive report that Israel has since 2019 targeted at least a dozen vessels bound for Syria and mostly carrying Iranian oil out of concern that petroleum profits are funding extremism in the Middle East. It cited US and regional officials as revealing the attacks, including with the use of water mines, in what it said was a new front in the conflict between Israel and Iran.

On March 10, The Media Line reported how Iran has denied attacking an Israeli owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman. The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations on March 9 circulated a letter that said Israel is “playing the victim to distract attention away from all its destabilizing acts and malign practices across the region.” The letter called the February 26 incident that blew holes in the hull of the MV Helios Ray a “complicated false flag operation”.

A video released on March 7 by Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen news network, featuring unverified video apparently recorded by Iranian drones, purported to show that the holes were created from inside the ship. The holes “were not created by an external attack, but some individuals inside the ship created the holes in order to indicate that the ship was attacked,” the news network said.

News

Dismiss