How Europe Can Keep Money Flowing to Iran
Keeping the Islamic Republic on the global SWIFT network would defy the U.S. and its sanctions.
Tempers are running high.
Photographer: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
The determination of European nations, Russia and China to keep the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran alive isn’t necessarily futile. Europe has more influence than the U.S. on SWIFT, the Brussels-based global payments network.
The system was founded in the 1970s by a group of global banks that wanted to standardize the way they shared transaction information, instead of letting each country, or even big banks, impose their own standards. SWIFT is owned by its members and provides the backbone of modern international banking, carrying more than 30 million transaction-related messages a day among 11,000 banks. Because it is based in Brussels, it is subject to European Union laws. In 2012, the EU imposed sanctions on Iranian banks, and SWIFT expelled 30 Iranian members, including the country’s central bank. Iranian banks were reconnected to the network in 2016.