Secretary of State John Kerry stated that “it is probably fair to say something may find its way to some bad or nefarious activity” regarding the money that will be released to Iran under the nuclear deal on Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “Amanpour.”
Kerry said, “I keep hearing people talk about hundreds of billions of dollars that will be released. That is not what will happen. The money that has been held back in escrow is money actually that belongs to Iran, but it has not been delivered to Iran under the sanctions regime. It — the real amount is somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 55 billion dollars. Much of that money is already spoken for in Iran, because of contracts with China, because of bad loans, because of balance of debt payments, because of infrastructure projects. And for Iran to bring its oil industry back to where it was just five years ago, they would have to invest several hundred billion dollars. So yes, it is probably fair to say something may find its way to some bad or nefarious activity, but the activities that we have objected to that Iran has engaged in, are not fueled primarily by money.”
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