Iranian banks are likely to be reconnected soon to the SWIFT financial transaction system of which they were deprived as a result of the international economic sanctions. However, experts say the reconnect would be the beginning and SWIFT of itself is means and not the end goal that banks should pursue.
“Lenders should strive to reestablish strong ties with foreign brokerages. SWIFT is only a tool to help realize this objective”, Kazem Doust-Hosseini, a banking expert, told Eghtesad News website.
He believes that uncoupling from SWIFT “did not pose a serious challenge to Iran’s international banking operations as encoded emails served the purpose and were an alternative” that helped to maintain ties with foreign brokerages. “It was the deterioration of working relations with foreign banks that hurt the banking sector the most.”
SWIFT, or Society for the Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, provides various services including transmitting letters of credit, payments and securities transactions among 9,700 banks in 209 countries. Iran was cut off from the system in 2012 as economic and banking sanctions were tightened over the nuclear dispute.
