On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Michael Waltz said that some Iranian funds were unfrozen “to keep Iran at the table.” But they’ll buy American stuff with it.
Host Laura Ingraham asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:45] “Mr. Ambassador, a sticking point for a lot of people is point 11 of the MOU about the unfreezing of the funds for Iran. So, the wording says that funds would be unfrozen ‘upon the implementation‘ of the agreement. But then U.S. officials later said it’s kind of a pay for performance framework, they have to do X in order to get Y, Y being the funds. What’s the truth there? Because it seems very murky.”
Waltz responded, “Well, Laura, here’s the complicated reality: You literally have decades of statutory sanctions, ones put in place in law by Congress, you have a series of executive orders, ones that President Trump put in place first term and put back in place second term under maximum pressure, and then you have U.N. sanctions, multilateral sanctions that you have to come back to the Security Council to lift. So, you have a whole series. And the vice president and the team, again, for performance, for results could begin lifting those. But, in this case, in a classic President Trump deal, yeah, they unfroze some of them to keep Iran at the table. But guess what they’re going to buy? They’re going to buy American crops, American farmers, soybeans, and other types of agricultural goods and wheat that we’re going to dictate what those funds buy, not the Iranians.”
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