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US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has insisted that a large portion of unfrozen Iranian assets would go towards purchasing US food and medicine, despite claims from Iranian officials that they have made no such commitment.
Speaking to CNBC, Bessent declared, "Any money that the Iranians get is going to be used, first, for the benefit of the Iranian people." Bessent stated that his department will directly oversee the allocation of the funds, likely distributed through Qatar. Elaborating on the financial mechanism, Bessent said, "A very large percentage of it will go to buy US foodstuffs and medicine," adding, "So we will be recycling the money back into US products." These assertions come amidst an evolving financial architecture under negotiation, within which Washington has agreed to release USD 12 billion in frozen funds to Iran and temporarily suspend sanctions on oil from the Islamic Republic, according to reports by Iranian state media. Providing the American perspective on these reports, US Vice President JD Vance stated that Iranian assets had not yet been unfrozen as part of the pact, clarifying that if they were, they would not fund terrorism and could instead be used to buy US goods such as soybeans. Vance explained that US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, along with Qatar, a co-mediator in the dialogues, had come up with "a very interesting solution" to ensure those funds were not misused. "If there is any frozen Iranian asset that is unfrozen, then we have approval over that process; the Qataris have approval over that process," Vance said. However, Ali Bahreini, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, flatly rejected that assertion. "Iran is the only country that will decide what to do with its assets, which are going to be defrozen," Bahreini told reporters in Geneva, directly challenging the Western narrative of joint oversight. He added, "So I reject any claim that there would be any role for any other country to have an influence on those decisions or on those processes." Bahreini, who had been part of the Iranian diplomatic delegation at the Burgenstock complex in central Switzerland, where the mediated deliberations took place, contextualised the friction within a broader historical landscape, noting that Iran has been subject to asset freezes and sweeping sanctions by the US and others for much of its history since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Currently, the contentious issue forms a key component of a memorandum of understanding signed between Tehran and Washington, laying the groundwork for 60 days of negotiations to settle broader issues, including Iran's nuclear programme and sanctions relief. While Bahreini stated that Iran's blocked assets would be unfrozen "very soon", he restricted the scope of international involvement to pure logistics. He acknowledged that "there are some technical arrangements which should be made by the United States and by Qatar, because the assets have been frozen by the United States, and at least some parts of those assets are in Qatar." "Definitely there is a role for them, but that role is limited to these technical aspects of defreezing of assets," the Iranian diplomat said, firmly drawing Tehran's red lines on state sovereignty. "Certainly, Iran does not allow them to have further influence on the other processes... That is something Iran and only Iran will decide." (ANI)
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