Global Financial Watchdog Gives Iran 4 Months to Stop Terror Funding and Avoid Blacklist

To avoid being blacklisted, Iran has four months to fulfill promises made to stop the financing of terrorist groups, a global money-laundering watchdog warned. 

By: AP and United with Israel Staff

A global money-laundering watchdog has given Iran until February to crack down on terror funding or risk deeper economic isolation.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said Friday it would effectively blacklist Iran if it doesn’t fulfill 10 promises made to pass and enforce laws against financing terrorist groups.

Worried about renewed US sanctions over its nuclear program, Iran’s parliament voted this month to join a global convention against terror financing, but the bill hasn’t been ratified yet.

The FATF, an intergovernmental group based in Paris, gave Iran four more months to comply. If it doesn’t, the FATF could take measures further discouraging or hindering foreign investment in Iran.

‘A Near-Global Terrorist Reach’

Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, the Trump administration said in an annual report in September.

The State Department’s annual survey of global terrorism accused Iran of intensifying numerous conflicts and trying to undermine governments throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran’s “terrorist affiliates and proxies,” the report said, “demonstrated a near-global terrorist reach.”

The report comes as the Trump administration is toughening its stance against Iran. President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord with Iran earlier this year and has begun to dismantle sanctions relief granted under the 2015 deal.

Re-imposing sanctions is one part of a larger effort by the US to cut Iran off from funds used to support proxy forces and support other “malign activity” in the region, including terrorism, according to Trump administration officials.

The financial crisis in the Islamic Republic has significantly affected its terror proxy Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, last Tuesday Iran sent Hezbollah advanced weapons technology to turn unguided rockets into precision missiles, new flight data obtained by Fox News suggests.

The plane carried weapons components, including GPS devices to make precision-guided weapons in Iranian factories inside Lebanon, intelligence sources said. Western sources told Fox that the cargo was headed for secret Hezbollah sites near the Beirut airport in order to target Israel in the future.

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