U.S. and South Korea talking about Releasing Iran’s Frozen Assets
South Korean Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki and the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen held a meeting in Italy to discuss using the Swiss channel for transferring Iranian money to be used for purchasing basic goods and medicine and the U.S. has agreed to cooperate in resolving the issue.
Nearly seven billion dollars of Iranian oil revenues have been frozen in two South Korean banks since September 2019, when Washington’s sanctions waiver for South Korea’s imports of Iranian oil expired.
The two sides now appear to be moving toward a solution for the difficult issue after a few rounds of failed negotiations in January, in which both countries proposed a number of solutions none of which broke the deadlock over the issue.
With the negotiations still going on, Tehran and Seoul seem to be in the final stage of resolving the assets issue given South Korea’s close contacts with the Biden administration, which has promised to rekindle diplomacy with Iran by reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
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