President Trumpin a tweet, Dec. 12, 2018
This is an egregious version of a claim that President Trump has made repeatedly about 30 times,according to our database of Trumps false and misleading claims. We had originally looked into the details of the $150 billion for a fact checkduring President Barack Obamas administration,fact-checked the claim during the 2016 presidential debatesand noted it inroundups of various Trump news conferencesand interviews.
Somehow its never been put to the Pinocchio Test. But if the president is going to keep getting this wrong, its time to give this falsehood a Pinocchio rating.
The Facts
There are two numbers that Trump loves to reference when discussing the international nuclear agreement negotiated with Iran when Obama was president: $150 billion and $1.7 billion. The latter was a cash transaction, said to be the settlement of a long-standing Iranian claim against the United States, with interest, that was curiously timed to arrive when Iran released four detained Americans. (We discussed this payment at length in this fact check.)
Trump might have grounds to complain about the circumstances of the $1.7 billion cash transaction. But hes all wet about the $150 billion claim, especially when he suggests it was taxpayer money. Thats certainly what he did in this tweet, asking why Democrats will not agree to appropriate $5 billion for a wall on the southern border with Mexico when they gave Iran 150 Billion Dollars.
But unlike the cash deal, this was not U.S. money. It was Irans money, frozen in international financial institutions around the world because of sanctions intended to curb Irans nuclear ambitions. For instance, many of the funds were held in banks in Asia, including China and India, as well as Turkey. Many of the countriesreceived waiversto buy Iranian oil and gas during the sanctions but placed the payments in escrow-style accounts that remained off-limits to Iran. The Islamic Republic also transferred assets to Asian banks from Europe in anticipation of financial sanctions.
On top of that, Trumps repeated use of the $150 billion figure is off-base. That was an upper-range estimate, but the Treasury Department said much of it was not liquid. Once Iran fulfills other obligations, it would have about $55 billion left, Treasury said.
Estimates of total Central Bank of Iran (CBI) foreign exchange assets worldwide are in the range of $100 [billion] to $125 billion, Adam J. Szubin, acting Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence,told Congressin 2015. Our assessment is that Irans usable liquid assets after sanctions relief will be much lower, at a little more than $50 billion. The other $50-70 billion of total CBI foreign exchange assets are either obligated in illiquid projects (such as over 50 projects with China) that cannot be monetized quickly, if at all, or are composed of outstanding loans to Iranian entities that cannot repay them. These assets would not become accessible following sanctions relief.
For its part, the Central Bank of Iransaidthe number was actually $32 billion, not $55 billion.
Nader Habibi, a professor of economics at Brandeis Universitys Crown Center for Middle East Studies, didhis own calculation of Irans frozen assetsin 2015. He noted that $10 billion was in Iraqi banks and could not be recovered quickly and that nearly $25 billion was deposited in Chinese banks as collateral for several Chinese investments in Iran. He estimated that only about $29 billion would be available to Iran for immediate use. In context of Irans oil revenue, he wrote, $29 billion of released funds doesnt amount to that much and represents only half of Irans current oil export revenue.
(Habibi said in an email: I have not come across any new information since I wrote that piece in 2015 to change my assessment.)
We should note that Trump said Obama got nothing in exchange for lifting sanctions as part of the nuclear agreement. Perhaps thats a matter of opinion, but experts said that Iran was generally in compliance with the agreement when Trump decided to terminate it.
The Pinocchio Test
Trumps use of the $150 billion continues to be problematic. That was a high-end estimate, and the actual number available to Iran appears to have been between $25 billion and $50 billion.
But even more troubling, Trump suggests this was taxpayer money. In the tweet, he explicitly compared it to a congressional appropriation. Thats just flat wrong and worthy of Four Pinocchios.
Four Pinocchios
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Fact Checker User Poll
User Poll Results:265 responses
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Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than three decades. Send him statements to fact check byemailing him,tweeting at him, or sending him a message onFacebook.
