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By Jenna Lifhits
Despite State Department investment campaign on behalf of Islamic Republic.
A group of think tank scholars, congressmen, and intelligence officials is urging an intergovernmental financial watchdog to keep Iran on its so-called blacklist, despite Obama administration officials’ vocal encouragement of trade and investment in the Islamic Republic.
In a letter Tuesday, the non-profit advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran called on the Financial Action Task Force to “maintain and strengthen counter-measures against Iran” during the body’s plenary meeting this week.
“Until the regime’s banks meet the international standards on money laundering, no financial institution can afford the risk of doing business with Iran,” the letter, signed by officials such as former Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, and Foundation for Defense of Democracies executive director Mark Dubowitz, stated.
The letter also reiterated Iran’s support for “its terror proxy Hezbollah,” its State Department status as the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and its designation by the Treasury Department “as a jurisdiction of money laundering concern.”
For years the FATF has classified Iran as a “high-risk and non-cooperative jurisdiction,” or an entity that fails to address money laundering and terrorist financing. The group reaffirmed the “serious threat [Iran] poses to the integrity of the international financial system” as late as February 2016.
UANI’s call to maintain Iran’s blacklist status comes after months of State Department efforts to convince hesitant foreign banks and companies to do business with the Islamic Republic.
“I have personally gone beyond the absolute requirements of the lifting of sanctions to personally engage with banks and businesses and others who have a natural reluctance after several years of sanctions,” Secretary of State John Kerry said last week.
In April, his State Department pinned their investment campaign on America’s Iran deal obligations after Iran demanded that the U.S. play a greater role in facilitating financial relief.
“It is incumbent on us to live up to our end of this deal,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. “Part of that is to advise these banks and governments.”
The State Department applauded this week’s potential $25 billion deal between Chicago-based Boeing and Iran Air along similar lines, calling it “good … for both the economy and for public safety” as well as “permissible” under the Iran deal.
Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo warned of the repercussions of Kerry’s efforts to boost Iran’s economy in an email to the Weekly Standard Wednesday.
“Secretary Kerry, who has taken on the role of ‘Economic Development Minister for Iran,’ continues to do everything he can to support investment in Iran,” Pompeo wrote. “Given Kerry’s apparent passion for supporting the Iranian regime, he is no doubt lobbying the Financial Action Task Force to change its eight years of warnings on Iran and suddenly find that the Islamic Republic now meets international financial standards. If the FATF did this, it would be an extremely dangerous decision.”
While some Treasury Department officials have similarly rejected Kerry’s calls to invest in Iran, others have appeared optimistic about the Islamic Republic’s economic reforms.
“Iran has taken important steps that I think we should acknowledge and that they should get credit for in trying to come off of [the FATF] list,” the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for terror financing, Daniel Glaser, said in May.
“They have recently enacted a terrorist financing law. They have recently engaged with FATF and are in discussions with FATF to try to come up with an action plan of steps that they need to take in order to fully comply with international standards, and I think that those discussions have been productive.”
