Contradicting Kerry, Iran Claims $100 Billion in Sanctions Relief ‘Fully’ Released

(CNSNews.com) – Iran now has access to more than $100 billion in formerly frozen assets that has been “fully” released as a result of the nuclear deal, regime spokesman Mohammad-Baqer Nobakht has claimed in an interview with state-owned television.

“These assets have fully been released and we can use them,” Press TV quoted Nobakht as telling the Alalam TV network late Sunday. He said much of the money – Iranian oil revenues – had been held in banks in China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey for years because of sanctions imposed over the nuclear program.

With Iranian banks now reconnected to SWIFT – the global cross-border financial transactions system from which Iran was excluded in 2012 – those funds could now be repatriated. However, he said much of it would not be brought directly home, but instead be used for purchases and investments abroad.

Nobakht’s claim contradicts assurances by Secretary of State John Kerry that the actual benefit to Iran resulting from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal would amount to some $55 billion.

When he appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on July 28 last year to defend the deal finalized in Vienna a fortnight earlier, he stated, “We’re not talking about 150 billion, we’re not talking about 100 billion; we’re actually talking about about 55 billion dollars that will go to Iran.”

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