The State Department said Thursday that it cannot explain publicly what changed that allowed U.S. officials to remove Iran’s national air carrier from a list of sanctioned entities, a move that could let Iran Air buy up to 100 Boeing aircraft in a deal reportedly worth $25 billion.
Five years ago, the Obama administration’s Treasury Department sanctioned Iran Air after determining that the airline is “used by the IRGC and Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL), to transport military related equipment.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Treasury said, “continues to be a primary focus of U.S. and international sanctions against Iran because of the central role it plays in all forms of Iran’s illicit conduct, including Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, its support for terrorism, and its involvement in serious human rights abuses.”
As part of the Iran nuclear agreement, the U.S. agreed to take Iran Air off the list of specially designated nationals (SDNs) subject to sanctions. But on Thursday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said he was not permitted to explain what changed, or what assurances Iran might have given about how Iran Air operates.
Instead, Kirby essentially said people will have to trust that State made the right call, for the right reason.
“I’m not at liberty to go into the reasons behind the fact that it was removed from the SDN list,” he said. “All I can tell you is that we wouldn’t have done that if we weren’t comfortable doing so.”
Kirby was pressed repeatedly to explain if any assurances were given, but refused to indicate that any guarantees were given.
“We wouldn’t have made the decision we made in the [Iran deal] in terms of removing them from the SDN list if we didn’t have reason to do that,” he said.
He also stressed that the decision could be reversed, if the U.S. sees any questionable activity by Iran Air.
“Should we determine that licensed aircraft, goods or services are being used for purposes other than exclusively civil aviation and use, or they’ve been resold and retransferred to persons on the SDN list, we would view this as grounds to cease performing our commitments under that aviation section in whole or in part,” he said.
“We’re not ever going to turn a blind eye to Iran’s continuing destabilizing activities, and their state sponsorship of terrorism,” he added. “Any suggestion that we would, that we wouldn’t and don’t have tools available to us to deal with that, is simply baseless.”
