Acting Treasury Under Secretary Adam Szubin on Wednesday denied that the Obama administration would provide Iran sanctions relief in the form of access to the dollar or U.S. financial system.
In his clearest comments to date on the controversial issue, Szubin cited persistent misinformation about the sanctions relief available to Iran under the nuclear agreement, and said it’s untrue that the administration is “about to provide access to the U.S. financial system.”
“We will not provide Iran access to the U.S. financial system and we will not restore the ‘U-turn’ authorization,” he said Wednesday during a speech at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ annual forum.
Instead, Szubin said the U.S. would be “very careful” to make good on the promises made to Iran during the nuclear negotiations.
“That means providing clear guidance about the type of commerce that is now permitted,” he said, reiterating a point President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have made in recent weeks.
“We are not standing and will not stand in the way of permissible business activities involving Iran or the kinds of transactions that Iran is entitled to work towards under the [nuclear agreement,” he said.
Szubin was also quick to say the U.S. and other world powers involved in negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran did not guarantee economic outcomes or a “flood of immediate business into Iran.”
“Nor could we,” he said. “That outcome depends on the business judgement of thousands of market participants. Ultimately the [nuclear deal] is an international arrangement, not a cashier’s check.”
Confusion over whether Treasury will grant Iran some form of access to the U.S. dollar in violation of sanctions that fall outside the nuclear deal is widespread in Washington.
Just two hours before Szubin spoke at the same forum, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, warned against the danger of the administration providing “dollarized transactions as an element of any trade with Iran without our seeing major changes in Iran’s non-nuclear nefarious behavior.”
“The existing sanctions that block Iran from the U.S. financial system were put in place because of Iran’s nuclear program but also because Iran presented a threat to the integrity of the international financial system,” she said. “Today, Iran remains just as much of a threat to the integrity of the financial system as it did when the sanctions were first enacted.”
The Obama administration has repeatedly tried to shoot down media reports over the last several weeks claiming that the administration plans to help facilitate dollar-dominated international business transactions in order to boost Iran’s economy. Several GOP critics in Congress have accused Obama and some of his top officials involved in the issue of confusing denials.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week that he plans to pass legislation specifically barring “U-turn” transactions allowing Iran to make offshore-to-offshore payments that cross the U.S. banking sector for just a second.
Jacqueline Klimas contributed to this report.
