MP Calls INSTEX Means for Controlling Iran’s Oil Revenues
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A member of the Iranian parliament’s presiding board warned that the European Union’s mechanism for trade with Iran known as the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) has been developed to control the Islamic Republic’s oil revenues.
Speaking to the Tasnim News Agency, Asadollah Abbasi cast doubt over the sincerity of those behind INSTEX and said, “The Europeans are not trustworthy.”
“So far, they have not properly lived up to their undertakings so that (we can be assured) they would want to develop the financial mechanism,” he added.
“INSTEX is an instrument for controlling and managing Iranian oil revenues from Europe,” he went on to say.
On Friday, Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Abdonnaser Hemmati said a mechanism commensurate with INSTEX will be established in the country soon.
“In the talks that my colleagues had with representatives from the three European countries (Britain, France and Germany) and the president of INSTEX at the CBI (office) in Tehran last week, they gave a full explanation of the Iranian mechanism in line with the European mechanism,” Hemmati said.
Earlier this week, the president of INSTEX traveled to Tehran to hold talks with senior Iranian officials on ways to make the mechanism operational.
INSTEX is based in Paris and managed by the German banking expert Per Fischer.
The three European countries that are signatories to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are reportedly going to use the channel initially only to sell food, medicine and medical devices in Iran.
In May 2018, the US president pulled his country out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal that was achieved in Vienna in 2015 after years of negotiations among Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany).
Following the US withdrawal, Iran and the remaining parties launched talks to save the accord.