On Monday, the U.S. Secretary of State spoke at London’s Chatham House, where he urged big banks to start extending credit to the Islamic Republic, as a reward for its “having met its part of the bargain.” Even as he admitted that he was making “good-faith efforts way beyond” what the nuclear deal specifies, he erroneously reassured potential lenders that as long as they did “due diligence” they would face no problems from U.S. enforcement agencies. (So egregious were Kerry’s remarks that the State Department itself has had to issue a correction.) Elliott Abrams comments:
Despite the innumerable ways in which Iran has demonstrated bad faith—from its continuing support for terrorist groups to its detention of American sailors in January to its arming of the Houthi rebels in Yemen with missiles with which they have attacked American ships—Kerry wants us to bend over backward to help their economy. It isn’t enough to remove sanctions that prevent banks from lending to Iran; Kerry has become a cheerleader urging banks to make more loans, whatever the risks. . . . Kerry is now giving banks bad advice—advice that is directly contradicted by U.S. Treasury officials. . . .
The U.S. Treasury Department’s designation of Iran, including its central bank and financial institutions, as a primary money-laundering concern . . . still stands. As part of that designation, Treasury determined that “the international financial system [is] increasingly vulnerable to the risk that otherwise responsible financial institutions will unwittingly participate in Iran’s illicit activities.” . . .
So . . . Kerry is acting as a salesman for Iran, pressing banks to do business with entities there that present real dangers to the banks. In the past, banks have been fined billions of dollars for such transactions. Treasury keeps reminding them of the dangers—and it is Treasury, not State, that is in charge of enforcement.
Read more on Pressure Points: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2016/11/03/kerry-drums-up-business-for-iran-while-treasury-warns-against-it/