West offered Iran $20bn worth of sanctions relief in Geneva
Secretary of State John Kerry offered Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif the immediate release of $3bn of the $50 bn assets frozen in Western banks, as an incentive to signing a deal essentially freezing its nuclear program at the Geneva conference which ended inconclusively Saturday night. Sources close to the closed-door discussions calculated that the West offered Tehran a sanctions relief package worth a total of app. $20bn. It included ending restrictions on Iranian’s gold, petrochemical and car industries, which would have netted the Iranian treasury another $16.5 bn. The Iranian foreign minister also demanded that the banned SWIFT foreign transfers facilities be restored to Iranian banks.