Cairo, Jul 29 (EFE) in 2018 when it left the nuclear pact, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported today.
In a letter dated July 22, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi forwarded a government bill on the financial dispute with South Korea to Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohamad Baqer Qalibaf, the source said.
According to the bill, ratified by the Council of Ministers on July 5, the dispute between the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the South Korean government will be submitted to arbitration.
Tasnim claimed that South Korea was the third largest customer of Iranian crude and the first buyer of Iranian condensate before 2018, when the United States withdrew from the nuclear deal and imposed sanctions on Iran.
Since then, “the country has refused to repatriate funds owed to Iran for energy imports for fear of US sanctions on its economy,” Tasnim said.
The agency said that according to unofficial estimates, Iran has funds worth more than $7 billion frozen in two South Korean banks that it cannot access because the banks and authorities in the East Asian country refuse to process them out of fear. to face US sanctions.
Last June, Iran announced that Iraq had unfrozen $2.7 billion of Iranian funds blocked by US sanctions.
The United States, during the presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021), abandoned the nuclear agreement in 2018 and Iran began to breach its obligations a year later.
The current US president, Joe Biden, tried to revive the agreement, but negotiations with Iran and the other powers of the pact (China, Russia, France, Germany and the United Kingdom) are at a standstill. EFE
ijm/fpa
