WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is leaving the door open to new sanctions relief for Iran, including possibly long-forbidden access to the U.S. financial market, prompting increased concern from Republican opponents of last year’s nuclear deal.
Rep. Ed Royce, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, expressed alarm in a letter this week to the president that the U.S. could grant Iranian businesses the ability to conduct transactions in dollars within the United States or through offshore banks. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said he is “deeply troubled” by the possibility.
The concession would go a long way to meet Iran’s complaints that it hasn’t been sufficiently rewarded by the West for taking thousands of uranium-spinning centrifuges offline, exporting its stockpile of the bomb-making material and disabling a facility that would have been able to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
But critics of the Iran deal say the action would break pledges the administration made while selling the seven-nation agreement last summer.