The Obama administration’s $8.6 million payment to Iran for 32 metric tons of heavy water was conducted absolutely transparently, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Monday.
The deal was reported to Congress and discussed with lawmakers, Moniz said during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “There was no mystery about it, no secrecy. It’s done. The material has arrived. Everything has been fine.”
Under the Iran nuclear deal, the nation was limited to no more than 130 metric tons of heavy water to be used for startup of its redesigned and rebuilt Arak nuclear reactor. “In the spirit of trying to get things moving,” Moniz said, the U.S. bought some of Iran’s surplus; it was shipped to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, with some to be used at the site’s Spallation Neutron Source and the rest sold to industrial customers.
Moniz was responding to a question from a staffer for Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), one of many GOP critics of the deal, regarding the way the payment was made.
The heavy water deal itself proved controversial on Capitol Hill, at one point holding up Senate passage of the fiscal 2017 energy and water appropriations bill. However, new criticism has focused on the acknowledgement that the United States in April paid for the heavy water via wire transfer even while President Barack Obama and other administration officials said other post-deal payments to Iran had to be made in cash due to the nation’s financial isolation.
In a prepared statement Monday, the Treasury Department said: “In the months following the lifting of sanctions under the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], Iran began to gain incremental access to the international financial system, which opened up more options for executing transactions, such as the heavy water transaction. No direct transfer was made from the U.S. to Iran.”
Separate bills from the House would prevent any cash payments to Iran and prohibit any federal entity in any fiscal year from spending money on Iranian heavy water.
