Iranian frozen assets in international accounts are calculated to be worth between $100 billion and $120 billion. Almost $1.973 billion of Iran's assets are frozen in the United States. According to the Congressional Research Service, in addition to the money locked up in foreign bank accounts, Iran's frozen assets include real estate and other property. The estimated value of Iran's real estate in the U.S. and their accumulated rent is $50 million. Besides the assets frozen in the U.S., some parts of Iran's assets are frozen around the world by the United Nations.
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Background
Iran's assets were first frozen by U.S. president Jimmy Carter in 1979, after revolutionaries overthrew the U.S.-allied Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's administration and took American hostages. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the United States ended its economic and diplomatic ties with Iran, banned Iranian oil imports and froze approximately 11 billion 1980-US dollars of its assets.
Many of the assets were then unfrozen in 1981 after the Algiers Accords were signed and the hostage crisis ended. At the time of the 1979 revolution, the Pentagon re-sold some $400 million in Iranian military equipment already paid for by the deposed government, and the money was "placed in an escrow account".
Much of the frozen cash includes Iran's income from selling a limited amount of oil prior to the lifting of the sanctions, when Iran could legally sell oil but could not transfer the money back to Iran, because doing so was illegal under U.S. sanctions.
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After nuclear negotiations
Some pages of the JCPOA were dedicated to the listing of individuals and entities whose assets would be unfrozen. According to Nader Habibi, a professor of economics at Brandeis University, JCPOA will lead to the release of only about $30 billion worth of assets; a similar figure of about $32 billion was estimated by Valiollah Seif, the chief of Iran's central bank.
According to the Washington Institute in 2015: "...the pre-deal asset freeze did not have as great an impact on the Iranian government as some statements from Washington suggested. And going forward, the post-deal relaxation of restrictions will not have as great an impact as some critics of the deal suggest."
The US government also has seized a Manhattan skyscraper belonging to the Iranian government (worth over a billion US dollar).
2016 seizure of Iranian assets
The US Supreme Court supported the statements of Congress and President Barack Obama that Iran "was financially responsible for the 1983 bombing that killed 241 Marines at their barracks in the Lebanese capital, Beirut." Iran had denied any involvement in any of the bombings. Families of the Marines and victims of other attacks that courts have linked to Iran are allowed under the court's law to seize some $2 billion in assets held in New York's Citibank belonging to the Central Bank of Iran. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, called the action "blatant robbery".
In response to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's letter to Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General showed willingness to help resolve the dispute between Iran and U.S., provided that both parties request for UN brokering.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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