By admin 
- Trump administration officials have suggested that the emerging Iran agreement could give Tehran access to as much as $300 billion from other countries.
- President Donald Trump repeatedly accused former President Barack Obama of funding terrorism by allowing Iran access to far less money in the 2015 deal.
- The administration emphasizes the new funds would come from Gulf nations and depend on Iran’s compliance with conditions.
President Donald Trump’s nascent agreement with Iran is beset by problems right now as many conservatives balk at it, but at the top of the list may be the issue of money flowing to Tehran.
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In an interview with CBS News Monday morning, Vice President JD Vance seemed to tacitly confirm the premise that Iran could be given “access” to a reconstruction fund worth as much as $300 billion.
Ever since that interview, the administration has strained to clarify things. It has emphasized that this money wouldn’t come from US taxpayers. Instead, it would be money from other Gulf countries that would only be available if Iran complies with a peace deal.
Vance said late Monday on Fox News that “we would invite other countries — not us, but other countries — to invest in” Iran. He echoed that Tuesday, telling Megyn Kelly that the US wouldn’t let the United Arab Emirates, for example, “invest in Iran, unless the Iranians change their behavior.”
Fair enough.
Except these are distinctions that Republicans — and Trump especially — have dismissed or even excoriated in the past.
And that’s when the dollar amount was significantly smaller than $300 billion.
When the Obama administration and other countries cut a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, it included giving Iran access to billions of dollars. In that case, it wasn’t money from other countries, but instead Iran’s own assets that had been frozen in foreign banks under sanctions. Estimates generally placed the dollar figure around $50 billion.
But this nuance was almost always absent from Trump’s rhetoric. He said the concession amounted to providing the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism with a financial windfall, even falsely claiming it was in “cash.” He cast it as unthinkable and a sign of American leaders’ weakness and poor negotiating skills.
Those comments could come back to bite him today.
“Iran receives a windfall of $150 billion, which will no doubt fund terrorism around the world,” he wrote in a September 2015 op-ed in USA Today. Trump often cited the inflated figure of $150 billion.
He said that same month in Oklahoma City that “we’re giving them $150 billion in order to create terror all over the world.”
At a December 2015 Republican presidential debate, Trump called it a “horrible, disgusting, absolutely incompetent deal with Iran where they get $150 billion,” adding: “They’re a terrorist nation.”
“I just don’t understand how we could have made a deal where we’re giving somebody that’s a terror nation $150 billion,” he said the next month in Iowa City.
The situations aren’t completely parallel, in that unfrozen Iranian assets aren’t the same as money from other countries. But both involve money that isn’t from US taxpayers but is suddenly being made available to Iran as an incentive in a deal.
Republicans had frequently argued in 2015 that such money was “fungible” — i.e. that even if the funds can’t be used directly for terrorism, they could be used to replace money that could then be diverted for terrorist uses.
Trump returned to the talking point amid tensions with Iran late in his first term and during his failed 2020 reelection race.
“So they paid $150 [billion] — 150, think of that,” he said at a White House event in September 2019. “And how can you do — how could you possibly do a thing like that? They paid all of that money in cash.”
(Again, the US did not pay the money in cash, and it wasn’t $150 billion.)
He added after ordering the killing Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 that “the Obama administration enabled and emboldened the Iranian regime. They gave Iran $150 billion, including $1.7 billion in hard, cold cash. Can you imagine?”
(The $1.7 billion refers to a settlement reached over $400 million in Iranian funds that were frozen in 1979.)
“The Iran nuclear deal signed by President Obama gave them $150 billion, and that’s when the real terror started,” Trump added the next day in an interview with Fox News.
And toward the end of the 2020 campaign, Trump repeatedly predicted that, if Joe Biden won the election, similar deals would result.
“If Biden ever got in, they’d give them another $150 billion, like they did,” Trump said in August 2020 in Yuma, Arizona. “The dumbest deal I’ve ever seen.”
“Iran will make another crazy deal where they give them $150 billion or $1.8 billion in cash,” he said in October 2020 in Tampa.
Even after losing the 2020 election, while campaigning for GOP Senate candidates in Georgia runoffs, Trump warned of a repeat.
“I think they want to start it up again. Can you believe this?” Trump said in Valdosta, Georgia. “I wonder if they’ll give them $150 billion? But, no, they’ll give them 250.”
On Monday, Trump’s own vice president suggested Iran could be given access to a fund with even more than that.
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