Iran CBI chief responds to Blinken's remarks on frozen funds

"Today it was reported that the US Secretary of State has said that they will not release Iranian reserves in Korea until Iran returns to the nuclear deal," the CBI governor Abdolnasser Hemmati said.

"It was clear from the beginning that the Korean government had no independent will to solve the problem of Iran's frozen assets," Hemmati wrote in a post on his Instagram account in Persian on Friday.

He referred to his recent meeting with the South Korean ambassador to discuss unfreezing Iranian frozen funds in South Korea under the US sanctions, saying that "The request for negotiations was made by the Korean ambassador and the agreement to pay for Iran's assets was made by the Koreans themselves, and I asked them at the meeting whether they should get the necessary permission from the Americans or not." 

The CBI chief added that the central bank does its plannings to meet the country's needs for foreign currencies in the fields of payments for the imports of basic needs such as medicine without taking into account the frozen funds and does not wait for unfreezing its assets in other countries by the US.

Blinken has recently said that the US will not allow South Korea to unfreeze Iranian funds unless Iran returns to abidance by the JCPOA or the Iran nuclear deal, from which the previous Trump administration withdrew illegally and imposed unprecedented sanctions on Tehran. In response to the unlawful US exit and the indifference of the other parties to make up for Iran's losses in accordance with the JCPOA, Iran took some steps away from the deal and diminished its JCPOA commitments.

KI/IRN84260668