Over $2b of Iran’s frozen assets to be released soon: Report
An informed source on Tuesday told Fars news agency that more than $2 billion of Iran’s frozen assets have been released in a neighboring country.
Earlier on Monday night, an official from Iran’s Plan and Budget Organization said that billions of dollars had entered the country.
The details of the release, including the exact location of the assets and the method of transfer, were not immediately disclosed.
Iran’s foreign assets have been frozen largely because of Western economic sanctions, particularly US sanctions reimposed after Washington’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, which restrict Tehran’s access to its foreign exchange reserves and oil export revenues held in banks abroad.
These sanctions have blocked Iran from freely using billions of dollars in assets, as transactions are curtailed by penalties that deter foreign financial institutions from processing payments for Tehran.
The most notable example was about $6 billion in oil revenues frozen in South Korean banks since 2019, which were transferred to a Qatari bank as part of a US-Iran prisoner swap deal in September 2023. However, after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the US and Qatar agreed to block Iran’s access to the funds, and the money has remained restricted ever since.