During a social media discussion of President Trump’s proposed infrastructure plan, a commenter remarked that “the $150 billion in unmarked cash that Obama sent to Iran would’ve made a good size dent in the infrastructure budget.”
There is a lot of misinformation about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but this particular nonsense is easily refuted. The fact is, it wasn’t unmarked cash, it was Iranian assets that had been frozen under previous sanctions regimes, and we didn’t have access to it. We could not have used it for infrastructure or anything else. It was their money. And while the exact amount is unknown, it will probably be between $100 billion and $150 billion. It was returned to Iran as part of the multi-national agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear weapons program. To date, they are in compliance with the agreement, although they still behave in ways that are problematic. Those activities, however, were never part of the agreement
February 26, 2018