Late last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved the lifting of the sanctions, a month after US and Iranian officials announced that an agreement in principle had been reached. The Associated Press was able to get the notification that Congress was not informed of the waiver decision until Monday.
The waiver was anticipated because the general terms of the agreement had already been disclosed. However, the announcement that five Iranian inmates will be freed as part of the agreement represented the first time the administration made that claim. The names of the detainees are unknown.
Republicans and others who believe the agreement will strengthen Iran’s economy at a time when that nation poses a greater threat to US soldiers and partners in the Middle East criticised the waiver.
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa made the following statement on X, the site that replaced Twitter: “It’s absurd for the US to be blackmailed into paying $6B for hostages which will help indirectly finance the number one foreign policy of Iran: terrorism.”
By converting the funds frozen in South Korea and sending them to Qatar’s central bank, where they will be stored for Iran to use for the purchase of humanitarian supplies, European, Middle Eastern, and Asian institutions won’t violate US sanctions.
The $6 billion payout was a crucial component of the prisoner release agreement, which resulted in the house arrest transfers of four of the five American detainees from Iranian prisons last month. The fifth prisoner had been placed under home arrest before.
Several European nations have shied away from taking part in the transfer because of the various US restrictions imposed on foreign banks involved in deals that benefit Iran. The purpose of Blinken’s waiver is to allay their worries about the possibility of US penalties.
People with knowledge of the negotiations predicted that the detainees could be freed as soon as next week.
Siamak Namazi, who was arrested in 2015 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison on suspicion of spying charges that have drawn criticism from around the world, Emad Sharghi, a venture capitalist sentenced to 10 years, and Morad Tahbaz, a British-American conservationist of Iranian descent who was detained in 2018 and also received a 10-year sentence, are among the American prisoners. The identities of the fourth and fifth inmates remained unknown.
“To facilitate their release, the United States has committed to release five Iranian nationals currently detained in the United States and to permit the transfer of approximately $6 billion in restricted Iranian funds held in [South Korea] to restricted accounts in Qatar, where the funds will only be available for humanitarian trade,” Blinken wrote.
Banks and other financial institutions in South Korea, Germany, Ireland, Qatar, and Switzerland are covered by the waiver of the restrictions.
Blinken wrote, naming the nations in question, “I determine that it is in the national security interest of the United States to waive the imposition of sanctions.”
Transactions involving previously sanctioned parties like the National Iranian Oil Company and the Central Bank of Iran are covered by the exemptions of sanctions.
Blinken wrote that the waivers would allow them “to transfer funds from accounts in the Republic of Korea to accounts in Switzerland and Germany and from accounts in Switzerland and Germany to accounts in Qatar, and to use the transferred funds for further humanitarian transactions in accordance with written guidance from the US Government