Lifting Sanctions Will Release $100 Billion To Iran. Then What? : Parallels : NPR
"The money [$100 billion] is sitting in China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, maybe a little bit in Taiwan," says Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "Those countries were buyers of Iranian oil."
Dubowitz, a sanctions specialist who is critical of the deal, says Iran hasn't been able to access the roughly $100 billion sitting in those banks because of sanctions imposed by the U.S. in 2012.
He says the mostly Asian nations buying oil from Iran agreed to hold the funds in escrow until the sanctions are lifted. In other words, Iran sold them the oil but couldn't move the cash back home. However, it was allowed to spend the money to buy goods from those countries.
"That's why you saw Chinese goods, in particular, flooding Iranian stores and markets,"