INSTEX SPV, shortly known as INSTEX, 
nowadays is a popular word in Iran and the Iranians are questioning whether it will work for normal trading between Iran and EU or not? At the same time, many are looking hopefully to it. To find an answer PIMI has verified many articles and analysis, and found the following news (first) in English and the other one in Persian, more appropriate for this purpose. To be moral, we have not edited either.
1- Iran not to endorse FATF bills in exchange for EU’s INSTEX
Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, (left image) a member of the Expediency Council, made the remarks before Tehran Friday prayers on March 8, adding “after the US’ withdrawal (from Iran nuclear deal), Europeans promised they would provide 12 solutions for their trade with Iran, but so far they have not even taken one step in this direction and have not even implemented one single solution.”
He went on to add, “9 months have passed since then, and they have only created a channel called INSTEX, which is not even a financial channel but one for making purchases. Europeans should take note that we will not be deceived by them and endorse the FATF-related bills, because in this case we will consider the Establishment’s benefits, not anyone’s whims.”
Mesbahi Moghadam then referred to FM Zarif and President Rouhani’s positive position on endorsing the FATF-related bills, and their promise that joining the anti-money laundering watchdog, if not making Iran’s trade situation better, would not make it any worse.
“I would say that our situation will actually become worse by acceding to the two conventions (CFT and Palermo). Is it really in our best interests to reveal our foreign trade to countries such as the US, Saudi Arabia or the Zionist regime?”
He leveled more criticism on EU’s trade mechanism for Iran, adding “Europeans are asking us to put our oil revenues into INSTEX in exchange for their selling us food and medicine. They also want us to endorse the FATF-related bills in return for the channel. However, we must not be deceived by them.”
2- Will INSTEX evolve the sanction’s story?
According to the Mehr News Agency, referring to EU officials and the private sector in Europe, the main obstacle in trade between Iran and Europe is US sanctions on the financial and banking sectors.
Therefore, Europeans launched plans to establish and maintain a banking relationship with Iran since the start of European talks in May. But with the failure of Iranian bank transactions, even in cases of food and medicine trade by European banks, these banking projects failed.
In this regard, before the imposition of oil sanctions in October 2018 the French Ambassador in United States had said: “We expect our American friends to do some work, for example, humanitarian items. Of course, humanitarian items are not sanctioned by the United States, but the fact is that banks are so terrified of sanctions that they don’t want to do any exchanges with the Iranians. So there are a lot of risk that will be shortages of medicine and food in Iran in the coming months if we don’t do anything to solve this problem. The US has responded positively to allowing food and medicine to send to Iran, but US hasn’t given a technical answer on how this should happen, and the banks will not cooperate until it does.”
If interested, please read more from the source: Mehr news
