Iran Set to Receive Massive Relief From SWIFT Sanctions

Iranian media outlets have been reporting that Iran is set to receive massive relief from the world’s biggest interbank transfer network, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) sanctions.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said on Monday that hundreds of Iranian individuals and bodies, including banks and financial institutions, would be delisted from the SWIFT sanctions immediately upon the Iranian nuclear deal coming into effect, according to Iranian Fars News Agency.

SWIFT is the system through which financial institutions move money electronically. Every major global financial institution uses SWIFT. In 2012, the United States successfully pushed for a number of Iranian banks to be barred from using SWIFT.

According to Aragchi, SWIFT sanctions will remain in place only against those blacklisted over connection to arms procurement and sales, missile development and nuclear proliferation.  He told Fars News that even those will be lifted at later stages. 

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According to Mark Dubowitz and Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the removal of the SWIFT sanctions was Iran’s main sanctions-related negotiating objective, and was important enough to warrant specific mention in Section 19 of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

According to Schanzer and Dubowitz, SWIFT took priority over access to lucrative European and Asian markets, and even the transfer of $150 billion of its frozen assets into convertible currency, because being barred from SWIFT is tantamount to exclusion from the international financial system.

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