The Central Bank of Iran announced it has received another tranche in frozen assets from the Omani Central Bank as part of the original Joint Plan of Action deal which was signed by Iran and the so-called P5+1 group of countries over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.
The CBI announced last Tuesday that it had received the $490 million from its Omani counterpart as part of the third phase of unblocking the country’s assets overseas.
It was the fifth installment of a total of $4.9 billion which had been agreed to be delivered to Iran in 10 payments, a statement by the CBI said.
Iran received around $7 billion of its frozen assets – estimated at around $130 billion in total – in the two previous phases of the agreement.
In November 2013, Iran and the P5+1 group — Russia, China, France, Britain, the US plus Germany — clinched an interim nuclear deal for a period of six month. Under the deal, Iran agreed to limit certain aspects of its nuclear activities as a confidence-building measure, and the world powers undertook to provide Iran with some sanctions relief. The relief included the unblocking of some of the country’s oil money, which had been frozen in foreign banks as part of the sanctions.
The deal extended twice and representatives of Iran and the six countries are now working to hammer out final details of a long-term accord by the end of June 2015.
