Central Bank and 15 Other Banks in Iran Connected to SWIFT

An official from the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Wednesday that the Central Bank and 15 other banks in Iran have been connected to the SWIFT network. Hamid Baidi-Nejad, the Director General of Political and International Security Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and head of the Iranian nuclear negotiation team, announced the connection of the Central Bank and several other banks on Wednesday, February 17. Mr. Baidi-Nejad wrote in a note on his Instagram page: "Surely some of the few friends who have been continuously doubting the seriousness of finalizing the operational procedure of the Central Bank and other Iranian banks for connecting to the SWIFT messaging network for over a month are surprised today." This official from the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs added: "We have explained to these dear friends several times that the SWIFT sanctions have been lifted since the first day of the implementation of the JCPOA, and the only remaining issue is that Iranian banks need to provide the necessary hardware and software requirements to connect to SWIFT." This member of the Iranian nuclear negotiation team also pointed out that "the connection of Iranian banks to SWIFT was only a technical issue," and announced: "Today we are happy that the Central Bank and 15 other Iranian banks have successfully completed these technical stages and all of them are connected to SWIFT." According to Mr. Baidi-Nejad, "Connecting to SWIFT will facilitate the exchange of Iranian banks with foreign banks and is a significant success for normalizing the country's banking relations." It was announced on Tuesday that the National Bank of Iran has also connected to the global interbank financial communications network, or SWIFT, after several years of sanctions. SWIFT is an institution that enables secure, fast, and low-cost financial communications between banks worldwide. Iranian banks were connected to this system until 2011, but after the intensification of banking and oil sanctions against Tehran, the connection of sanctioned Iranian banks to this system was cut off on March 17 of that year. After the implementation of the JCPOA, officials from the Central Bank of Iran announced that this bank, along with the National, Trade, Mellat, Industry and Mine, Post Bank, Sepah, Export Development Bank, and Workers' Welfare Bank, had been removed from the sanctions list and would soon connect to the SWIFT system.