US ‘committed’ to deal releasing $6 billion, Iran claims
Tehran is moving closer to accessing frozen funds, according to Iranian
and Qatari readouts of a call between the nations’ foreign ministers.
JNS
Jan 29, 2024
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
claimed on Friday that it has Qatari assurances of Washington’s
“commitment” to allowing it to use $6 billion in frozen funds, which the
Biden administration released to Qatari banks.
Readouts from Tehran and Doha of a phone
call between Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and Sheikh
Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani—who serves as both Qatar’s
foreign minister and prime minister—emphasized different things. But
they agreed in principle that the deal is being implemented.
Iran’s readout said that the leaders
discussed how Tehran “can use its assets in Qatar,” referring to the $6
billion released to Qatar in September in exchange for five American
prisoners.
“Al Thani said his country and the U.S.
are committed to the current deal and in line with an agreement between
the central banks of Iran and Qatar, the agreement is being
implemented,” per the Iranian readout.
Qatar is “continuing to implement the
recent agreement between Iran and the United States brokered by Qatar,”
per Doha’s readout.
The U.S. State Department did not respond
to a query from JNS. The issue did not come up during a press conference
that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held on Monday with Jens
Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO. The State Department also did
not provide a readout of Blinken’s meeting with Al Thani on Monday.
The Biden administration has repeatedly
insisted that none of the $6 billion in Iranian money has been spent.
After the administration said it held Iran to be complicit in Hamas’s
Oct. 7 terror attacks, a U.S. Treasury Department official reportedly told House Democrats in a closed-door meeting in October that the money “isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
The Biden administration has also said
many times that if Tehran did spend the money, it could only use it for
humanitarian purposes.
In December, JNS was the first to report
that a senior U.S. official said publicly for the first time that Iran
had accessed $10 billion, held in Omani banks under similar conditions
to the Qatari accounts, as part of two “transactions.” The official did
not provide details about the transactions in the public hearing.
John Kirby, coordinator for strategic
communications at the National Security Council of the White House, was
asked about the two transactions at a Jan. 4 White House press
conference. “I don’t have the details on that,” he said. “You’re going
to have to let me get back to you on that.”
U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al
Thani, prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar, at the U.S. State
Department in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29, 2024.
Critics of the $6 billion deal have argued
that money earmarked for humanitarian purposes nonetheless frees Iran
to spend more on its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs and to
support regional terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi even said in an interview in September that Iran will spend the money “wherever we need it.”
Kirby said the “fungibility argument” is false, during an interview with Fox News in October.
“It’s not like the Iranians were sitting
around and saying, ‘Hmm. Well, we have $6 billion that we can free up to
go fund terrorists and not feed our—we don’t have to worry about
feeding our people,’” he said. “They were never worried about feeding
their people. They were never worried about actual humanitarian
assistance to their own population and again, they don’t have any access
to it.”
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House
spokeswoman, was asked on Monday during the White House press conference
whether U.S. President Joe Biden was considering sanctioning Iranian
oil revenues in response to an attack on Sunday, in which Iran-backed
proxy forces killed three American soldiers in Jordan.
“I just don’t have anything to share on
that particular thing,” Jean-Pierre said. “As the president said himself
yesterday, after he acknowledged the three souls that were taken from
us, our service members, who bravely protect our national security, and
obviously, us as a country, he said that we shall respond.”
“I’m just going to not get ahead of that,” she added.
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