📰 General · CNN
US envoy heading to Switzerland as Lebanon fighting tests Iran agreement - CNN
From CNN via USVI News: Steve Witkoff is traveling to Switzerland, a US official said, as Washington and Tehran work to get technical talks back on track after a postponement. Follow for live updates.
The United States is working with Qatar to potentially make $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds available for use for humanitarian purchases, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The administration has stressed that Iran’s access to such funds, as well as sanctions relief, is conditional. However, the plan to make available the $6 billion in assets could serve as an early financial incentive for Tehran.
Such nearer-term incentives for early compliance have been floated by administration officials, and White House talking points from shortly after the MOU was signed described frozen funds as “the money Iran can access in the near term.”
The plan for the potential availability of the funds for humanitarian goods and medicine, if put into use, seems similar to a mechanism included in an agreement under President Joe Biden, when those funds were moved from restricted accounts in South Korea as part of a September 2023 deal to release five Americans who had been detained in Iran. CNN has reached out to the White House about the similarity.
Iran was only going to be permitted to use the money for specific humanitarian purchases like food, agricultural products, and medicine, and Biden administration officials stressed each transaction using the funds would be monitored by the US Treasury Department. The $6 billion in Iranian assets came from oil sales that were allowed and placed into accounts set up under the first Trump administration.
“We are implementing this arrangement through the establishment of what we are calling the humanitarian channel in Qatar,” which is designed to protect against money laundering and misuse of the funds, a senior administration official said at the time.
Moreover, the process for Iran to be able to spend the funds was expected to take months, if not years, “given the due diligence involved and the complexity of what have to be specific humanitarian transactions through this channel,” a senior State Department official told CNN at the time.
After the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the US and Qatar reached a “quiet understanding ” not to allow Iran to access any of the $6 billion in funds. They were never disbursed.
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