The Obama administration secretively gave a special license to Iran to access the U.S. financial system and U.S. dollars despite U.S. sanctions and its own statements to the contrary.
But Obama’s secret plot to allow Iran to skirt sanctions failed because American banks were afraid to violate US sanction, so they declined to participate. The Obama admin then approached two US banks in an attempt to persuade them to facilitate the conversion, but they still refused.
“Treasury and State Department officials sought other ways to move the funds. Discussions involved coordinating with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Bank for International Settlements, and the Central Bank of Germany,” according to the report.
These efforts also were unsuccessful and the administration never ultimately found a way to enable Iran access to the $5.7 billion, which was later converted by Bank Muscat and Iran outside the U.S. financial system.
Iranian officials expressed outrage at the United States over the failed bid, which prompted another series of discussions with these Iranian official about ways the Obama administration was going beyond the terms of the nuclear agreement to help Iran obtain hard currency.
The United States “exceeded our JCPOA commitments by OFAC’s issuing a license to enable Bank Muscat to work with any U.S. financial institution to facilitate the conversation of assets in the banks from rials to other non-dollar currencies,” one State Department official wrote to the Iranians in 2016.
This shadow diplomacy played out far from the public spotlight and occurred while Obama administration officials were publicly telling Congress a different story.
Sources familiar with the issue told the Free Beacon similar measures must have been taken to facilitate other transactions that the Obama admin hid from reporters, including the taxpayer purchase of Iranian nuclear material that Tehran produced in violation of the deal.
“As the Treasury and State Department worked behind the scenes to help Iran access the dollar, the message to Congress remained the same: The JCPOA did not allow Iran to access the U.S. financial system,” the report notes.
The report further discloses efforts by top Obama administration officials to lobby European countries to reengage in business with Iran, despite U.S. sanctions laws.
In one secret meeting, U.S. officials “signaled that it would not aggressively enforce violations of the new sanctions regime,” investigators found. “For example, during a [pro-Iran] roadshow in London in March 2015 with representatives from 10 major global financial institutions, the head of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Compliance [OFAC] assured attendees that ’95 percent of the time OFAC sees an apparent violation it results in a simple warning letter or no enforcement action,'” according to minutes of these meetings. “He explained OFAC would only take action in egregious situations.”
Source: Free Beacon
