Iran regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi with a new order to the country’s national bank added a new fact to his case of incompetence and his inability in directing and running a government, especially in the field of the country’s struggling economy.
Last Sunday at the tenth meeting of the Government’s Economic Coordination Headquarters, Raisi obliged the Central Bank to return foreign exchange resources to the country, which may have the least relativity with the central bank’s job description in the current situation, because the country’s foreign exchange resources have been affected by sanctions for several years, and obviously the regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs should be obliged to lift sanctions to solve this problem.
Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether such an order, in a strict way to the head of the Central Bank, can it be a solution to return foreign exchange resources to the country. And it remains to be seen whether the president’s orders can overcome the problems of the country’s foreign exchange resources.
This order was given by Raisi emphasizing the need to stabilize the market and take preventive measures of currency fluctuations, which is mainly due to the regime’s wasting of resources in corrupt and terror activities and the sanctions raised by them.
Iran’s foreign exchange resources are not available to the Central Bank to return them. There are two types of foreign exchange resources, one is foreign exchange resources that are available to international organizations and banks and have been seized because of sanctions, these organizations and banks are still not allowed to return Iran’s foreign exchange resources.
Recently, the U.S. allowed South Korea to give Iran’s regime $7 billion of its foreign exchange reserves in the form of goods. The U.S. government even specified the goods that should be from Samsung and LG brands. The rest of the currencies currently seized are not in the scope of the central bank’s work and authority to return them.
There are other foreign exchange resources, which are the currencies that some of the regime’s elements have taken from the Central Bank under the pretext of importing, some of these currencies have entered the country in the form of commodities, and others have neither been imported into the form of goods nor returned to the Central Bank, which is one of the worst and hidden corruption cases in Iran.
The executive grounds for returning foreign exchange resources to Iran are not provided for the regime at all. On blocked foreign exchange resources, the biggest problem is that it is tied to the JCPOA, which until now the regime did not accept to return to the negotiations while facing with higher demands, that each of them will be the rope around its neck.
And on the other side, no bank will work with the Iranian regime until it solves its FATF issue and its affiliated conventions such as the CF and Palermo are ratified in parliament and formally announced that they have been accepted, i.e. And until Iran’s financial transactions are not transparent and the issue of countering terrorism financing that Westerns believe is not signed, there will no progress in this field for the regime.
This means that even if Iran’s regime is allowed to export, they cannot use the international banking system because it relies on a new JCPOA to be signed and the FATF approved, which means that Iran’s financial transactions must be transparent.
If Iran’s financial transactions are not transparent, international banks fear that a case originating from money laundering or terrorism will be subject to U.S. sanctions, so no bank will take that risk.
Therefore, the hope that even if the JCPOA is signed will create an opening is a false hope, the United States will not remove all the regime’s sanctions and will keep 500 sanctions as its previously said, which are related to the regime’s cases such as its terrorism and human rights violations.
Finally, addressing the central bank to return the regime’s foreign currency resources is not an economic challenge but a political, therefore Raisi’s order to the central to return them is just propaganda for internal purposes to cover up its weakness.
