Conditional Passage of Palermo Through the Expediency Discernment Council
Conditional Passage of Palermo Through the Expediency Discernment Council
According to the spokesperson of the Expediency Discernment Council, the council has conditionally approved Iran’s accession to the Palermo Convention.
Mohsen Dehnavi wrote that after holding three sessions in the council and five sessions in the joint commission, the Expediency Discernment Council conditionally agreed to Iran joining the Palermo Convention.
He said the Islamic Republic of Iran has accepted this convention within the framework of its constitutional and domestic laws. Addressing CFT will be on the agenda in future sessions of the council.
In January last year, 2024, the leader of the Islamic Republic agreed to re-examine Iran’s accession to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo) and the Convention on Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT).
Of course, the special commission of the Expediency Discernment Council had approved these two bills at the end of March last year, but the final approval was left to the council, which has now been granted.
The Palermo Convention is an international agreement aimed at combating human trafficking, illegal manufacturing, and trafficking of firearms and ammunition.
The CFT is also one of the United Nations agreements that requires members to monitor banking transactions to prevent the financing of terrorism. Membership in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) requires joining both the Palermo Convention and the CFT.
Why is joining the FATF important?
Since 2007, Iran has been on the FATF blacklist. The FATF is the main body for combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and the production and distribution of weapons of mass destruction.
According to the representatives of the FATF’s global network, which includes over 200 jurisdictions and international observers, countries in this group are considered high-risk, and the network has called for action against them.
In June 2016, Iran committed to addressing strategic deficiencies to join the FATF.
Iran’s deadline for action expired in 2018, and in 2020, the FATF reminded Iran that it had not taken the necessary actions.
As a result, Iran remained on the FATF blacklist.
The FATF states it is concerned about the financial terrorism risk from Iran and its threat to the international financial system.
The FATF has 37 member countries, alongside the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Russia’s membership has been suspended.
This body investigates how money laundering is conducted and how terrorism is financed, sets international standards to mitigate these risks, and assesses whether countries are taking effective action to combat them.
Opponents argue that accepting the Palermo and CFT bills could severely limit Iran’s financial and military support for regional proxy groups like Hezbollah, which contradicts the country’s strategic interests.
Supporters and the government of Masoud Pezeshkian consider Iran’s non-membership in the FATF a significant obstacle to attracting foreign investment and removing economic barriers in the country.
Most countries in the world have joined both of these conventions.
Iran’s membership, within the framework of bills prepared by Hassan Rouhani’s government, was approved by the parliament, but the parliament’s resolutions were referred to the Expediency Discernment Council after opposition from the Guardian Council in November 2018.
The re-examination of these resolutions had previously begun with the agreement of the leader of the Islamic Republic in January 2020 in the council but was later halted.