“So long as Iran is carrying out its end of the bargain, we think it is important for the world community to carry out our end of the bargain,” Obama told reporters on the sidelines of a two-day summit on nuclear security in Washington on Friday.
The US will act to allay Iran’s concerns on sanctions relief, but Tehran must also reassure them it is a safe place to invest, he added.
Obama further said US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, along with his counterparts from the five other world powers that negotiated the deal with Iran, would provide “clarity to businesses about what transactions are, in fact, allowed,” Reuters reported.
However, he said the United States was not looking to permit the use of the US financial system for dollar-denominated transactions with Iran, and said foreign companies could work through European banks.
US media had reported earlier that the Obama administration was mulling over a plan to relax financial restrictions that ban US dollars in trade with Iran.
It is believed that Washington suddenly reversed its decision after a number of US lawmakers expressed concerns over this, arguing that “Tehran would be getting more than it deserves” from last year’s nuclear accord.
“These reports are deeply concerning, to say the least,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday in a statement.
Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat, also wrote a letter to Obama and said allowing dollar transactions for business with Iran “is clearly not required” by the nuclear deal and would only lead the Iranians to make further demands.
In a separate letter, Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Mark Kirk cited testimony last year by Treasury Department’s sanctions chief, Adam Szubin, who told lawmakers Iran wouldn’t be allowed “even to execute a dollarized transaction where a split second’s worth of business is done in a New York clearing bank.”
This is while Iran has said it is not interested in dealing with dollar and has switched to euro in its foreign trade.
Tehran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) reached the nuclear deal on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16.
The comprehensive nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), terminated all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran.