[ April 23, 2024 ]
A new Senate report reveals that Barack Obama secretly paved the way for Iran to tap into U.S. banks to convert cash it received from sanctions’ relief to dollars — despite the face the White House assured lawmakers it would do no such thing.
The report shows how State Department and Treasury Deparment officials during the Obama era quietly gave a special license for a major Omani bank to do business with two U.S. banks.
The U.S. banks were pressured into complying with the deal.
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The Washington Times has more:
The Obama administration — despite repeatedly assuring Congress that Iran would remain barred from the U.S. financial system — secretly mobilized to give Tehran access to American banks to convert the windfall of cash it received from sanctions relief under the 2015 nuclear deal into dollars, an investigative report by the Senate has revealed.
A copy of the report, obtained by The Washington Times, outlines how Obama-era State and Treasury Department officials discreetly issued a special license for the conversion to a major Omani bank and unsuccessfully pressured two U.S. banks to partake in the transaction, all while misleading lawmakers about the activities.
The document, compiled by the Senate’s Republican-led chief investigative subcommittee, began circulating Tuesday, just as the Trump administration issued its harshest warnings to date to foreign governments and companies to avoid doing business with Iran or find themselves in the crosshairs of Washington’s reimposition of sanctions as part of Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal.
“Companies doing business in Iran face substantial risks, and those risks are even greater as we reimpose nuclear-related sanctions,” said Sigal Mandelker, Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
She also called on foreign governments to harden their financial systems against “deceptive” Iranian transactions that ultimately channel money to terrorists.
The Iranian government “uses shell and front companies to conceal its tracks” as part of an elaborate scheme designed to procure cash for the Quds Force of Iran’s militant Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization, Ms. Mandelker said.
She issued the warnings in a speech at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank as Iran announced Tuesday that it was formally moving ahead with preparations to increase its nuclear enrichment capacities — the sharpest response to date by the Islamic republic to Mr. Trump’s pullout from the nuclear accord.
Iranian officials said the increase, while provocative, does not violate its commitments under the nuclear accord.
The president sent shock waves around the world with his May 8 decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear pact and begin reimposing U.S. sanctions, which the U.S., Europe, China and Russia had collectively lifted in 2015 in exchange for Iran’s promise to curb its suspect nuclear programs and allow international inspections.
While Iran told the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Tuesday that it plans only to increase enrichment within limits set by 2015 deal, the announcement came with threats from a top Iranian official that the activities could be quickly expanded. The warning put fresh pressure on European leaders to keep the nuclear accord alive despite Mr. Trump’s withdrawal.
The head of Iran’s nuclear agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Tehran is prepared to dramatically increase its capacity for enrichment but that the work so far is limited to building a facility for assembling the centrifuges. He made the comment a day after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered the increase in capacity and vowed that Iran would preserve its nuclear program despite the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 accord.
The Senate report focuses new scrutiny on the lengths President Obama’s team was willing to go to ensure the deal’s success as it was still being negotiated.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigations probe contends that the Obama administration went out of its way to keep U.S. lawmakers in the dark about calculated and secretive efforts to give Tehran a back channel to the international financial system and to U.S. banks, facilitating a massive U.S. currency conversion worth billions of dollars.
“Senior U.S. government officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal,” according to a draft copy of the document obtained by The Times. “Despite these claims, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, at the direction of the U.S. State Department, granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system.
“Even after the specific license was issued, U.S. government officials maintained in congressional testimony that Iran would not be granted access to the U.S. financial system,” the report said.
Sen. Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican who chairs the subcommittee, is set to outline his panel’s findings Wednesday.
Under terms of the nuclear deal, Iran was given the right to reclaim billions of dollars in state assets and bank accounts frozen by international sanctions, but it remained “illegal for U.S. persons, entities, and financial institutions to do business with Iran or parties on behalf of Iran.”
The ban included any “intermediary” transactions by U.S. banks to convert currency for Iran — a development that would have elevated the value of the Iranian assets on the global market and allowed Tehran to more easily move the money through the international banking system.
On the day the nuclear deal was implemented in 2015, Tehran had some $5.7 billion worth of assets at Bank Muscat in Muscat, Oman, according to Senate investigators, who said Tehran moved quickly to request access to the U.S. dollar.
On Tehran’s request, Bank Muscat contacted the U.S. Treasury Department’s office of foreign assets control.
According to the Senate report: “Muscat sought to convert $5.7 billion in Omai rials into euros. [But] because the rial is pegged to the U.S. dollar, the most efficient conversion was with an intermediary step through a U.S. bank using U.S. dollars.”
Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 2015 that Iran would “continue to be denied access to the [U.S.] financial and commercial market” under the proposed accord, but the Treasury office went ahead with attempts to quietly allow the currency transaction sought by Iran.
“On February 24, 2016, OFAC issued a specific license to Bank Muscat authorizing Iranian assets worth roughly $5.7 billion to flow through the U.S. financial system,” according to the Senate report, which claims the move was made “even though U.S. sanctions prohibited it.”
Even as office of foreign assets control officials directly “encouraged two U.S. correspondent banks to convert the funds,” the Treasury Department continued to deny it was working to facilitate the currency transaction, said the report, which cites a 2016 letter from the department to Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, and Sen. Mark Kirk, Illinois Republican, that contended the Obama “administration has not been and is not planning to grant Iran access to the U.S. financial system.”
The catch, according to Senate investigators, was that neither of the U.S. banks approached by the office of foreign assets control would take on the Iranian currency exchange — in part because of political concerns over the prospect of being found out to have secretly circumvented the remaining ban on U.S. transactions with the Islamic republic.
Despite the Obama administration’s efforts, Iran was ultimately forced to convert its Bank Muscat assets to euros in small increments using European banks and without accessing the U.S. financial system, the Senate investigators said.
Mr. Portman said in a statement Tuesday night that “the Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran.”
“Despite claims both before and after the Iran deal was completed that the U.S. financial system would remain off limits, the Obama administration issued a specific license allowing Iran to convert billions of dollars in assets using the U.S. financial system,” Mr. Portman said. “The only reason this transaction wasn’t executed was because two U.S. banks refused, even though the administration asked them to help convert the money.”
Such sanctions, he added, “are a vital foreign policy tool, and the U.S. government should never work to actively undermine their enforcement or effectiveness.”
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17 Comments
5 years ago
The Iran deal was very bad indeed. The Iranian’s as well are very bad indeed. I just do not know how this will play out in the near term. In the long term Iran will attempt to get the bomb. While Trump is in office Iran will lay low. Once the Dems get back in office then Iran gets the bomb.
5 years ago
Reply to
Ron rockit
It works like this. Pakistan helps North Korea with technology. Korea then helps Iran. China more or less over sees North Korea. It’s a dangerous times.
5 years ago
Iran nuclear deal to the Mullahs was greatest appeasement since Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to the leftie, 1930s German Socialist .. the Jew hating , Nobel Peace Laureate tried to condemn the next generation to a nuclear war.
The Mullahs in Iran, who hate women, lied to the world when they said it had never had a nuclear weapons program.
5 years ago
Reply to
taxpayer22
Agree. And dems will sell America to anyone if price is right !
Dems were paid by Iranian lobbyists to support Nuke deal http://tinyurl.com/mcake4d
And their holdovers still support it.
5 years ago
Reply to
Suresh
RINOS like Ryan, McCain, O’Connell, Rubio, Cruz, Flake and others are happy to help out too!
5 years ago
Reply to
taxpayer22
There is a joke making the rounds that it is an old Hawaiian custom that the volcano eruptions can be stopped through human sacrifice. The subject to be sacrificed must be native Hawaiian and occupied a high position of leadership. Obhammud immediately spoke up and said he was born in Kenya and has the birth certificate to prove it.
5 years ago
by hook or crook Obama was attempting to eradicate Israel with this deal.
5 years ago
Rubio is another POS.
5 years ago
5 years ago
So Pres.O’ is a sneaky,pro-Iran sleaze. I’m shocked.
5 years ago
I have long called for the arrest of the sodomite. But also for the 535 traitorous Congogressmen that put the fowl Negro in.
He was unqualified and unfit for office. His only qualification was he was a Negro with a big mouth. Nonetheless he committed some grave crimes as a usurper and impostor and they never seem to hang politicians. Why is that?
They are NOT American royalty. We don’t have leaders. They are representatives. Thus, if they commit a crime such as treason they must be hanged or jailed. I prefer hanging to lower taxes. 😉
5 years ago
I am really tired of all this talk about what Obama did .Either nail him and put him away or shut up!
5 years ago
Why isn’t the Kenyan behind bars ?????
5 years ago
Thanks to his counterfeit predecessor, now you see what President Trump cryptically was saying when he called the Iran nuclear deal the most stupid arrangement the US ever signed on to.
5 years ago
Lies, deceit, theft, treason, murder and more… the so-called legacy of the Muslim leader Barack Obama! If there is anyone worse in American history, I can’t imagine who it would be. This CRIMINAL ranks right up there as one of the worst!
5 years ago
Reply to
Ed Newbold
As bad as he is/was, Hillary still has him beat. She could teach the mafia a thing or two. Maybe her failing health has knocked her down a peg, but she is the personification of Jezebel. She never made it to the oval office though, so her power and reach never fully matured. If she had, she would have made Obama look ( puke, choke, gag ), good.
America was indeed fortunate to have Trump, and he can do some damage to the corrupt system that became the government no matter who sat in power, but he is one man in the middle of a gigantic swamp that has claimed many good lives before. They have been after him since they first realised he was a credible threat and they will continue even if Mueller fails. His term is up in 2020 ; the forces behind the corruption are biding their time and will not hesitate to pick up where they left off, and I seriously doubt they would tolerate a second term. If America cannot be used in their plan, they will throw her into utter chaos, and what better way to do that then to take out her leader.
5 years ago
We could say he learned from the Clintons, but after all, he came from Chicago. Many expressed concerns about that from the beginning.
