The full details of Qatar’s attempts to save Iran’s frozen funds in South Korea

Qatar is playing an odd role in its ongoing quest to secure the release of Iran’s frozen assets in South Korea, and has been more enthusiastic about releasing them than Tehran.

Iranian media reported that a high-level Qatari delegation met with Iranian officials in Tehran to review the mechanisms of releasing some of its frozen funds.

Officials from Qatar, the Iranian Foreign Ministry and Iran’s economic and governmental bodies attended the meeting. The latest meeting came after Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh announced on Monday that an agreement had been reached to unfreeze some of the country’s resources.

Khatibzada said at a weekly press conference: The framework for liberalizing foreign assets has been “identified and agreed upon”. He also said a high-level delegation is expected to visit Iran by the end of the week to finalize the plan to unfreeze the funds.

Observers speculate that Qatar’s attempts to recover the money may have an ulterior goal, which is to obtain the money or some of it to finance its operations in the region and to spend on its various plans in Middle Eastern countries.

Bilateral relations between Iran and South Korea are strained by the issue of Tehran’s assets in Seoul, estimated at around $7 billion, under U.S. sanctions that were reimposed after former President Donald Trump’s 2018 announcement that his country was withdrawing from the signed Iran nuclear deal in 2015.

Press reports said the South Korean government deposited the money in two South Korean banks years ago, but it was not transferred to the Central Bank of Iran due to US sanctions on Iran that former US President Donald Trump reimposed following his announcement in May 2018 that his country was withdrawing from the deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

Tehran estimates that its total assets held abroad are around $100 billion, including 35 billion in European banks.