The $150 Billion Iran Claim Skips Who Spent It

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Iran took $150 billion after the 2015 nuclear deal and built no highway with it. President Donald Trump used the same figure in April 2018, and added $1.8 billion in cash flown in barrels and boxes.

The funds were Iranian oil receipts frozen in foreign banks, not a check from the U.S. Treasury. What the number fight keeps skipping is who spent the cash that did become available: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the missile budget, and the groups those forces supply.

Trump and the Crown Prince Used the Same Number

On April 26, 2018, Trump said the prior administration had made a horrible deal, “giving $150 billion, giving $1.8 billion in cash, in actual cash carried out in barrels and in boxes from airplanes.” He had already called that money a slush fund for weapons, terror, and oppression.

Bin Salman got there first that month. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg during a U.S. visit, he said 60 percent of the Iranian economy was controlled by the Revolutionary Guard and that the deal’s economic benefits were not going to the people.

They took $150 billion after the deal, can you please name one housing project they built with this money? One park? One industrial zone? Can you name for me the highway that they built? I advise them, please show us something that you’re building a highway with $150 billion.

Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg

That Saudi crown prince’s critique of the deal returned in April 2026 as clipped video. The highway question is what travels. The banking detail under it rarely does.

Treasury Put Usable Cash Near $50 Billion

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, finalized July 14, 2015, lifted nuclear-related sanctions after inspectors certified Iran’s first nuclear steps. Implementation Day was January 16, 2016. Iran could then sell oil more freely and try to reach money that sanctions had trapped in foreign banks.

That trapped pile was Iran’s. Adam J. Szubin, acting Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told the Senate Banking Committee on August 5, 2015, that Central Bank of Iran foreign exchange assets worldwide sat in the range of $100 to $125 billion. His assessment of usable liquid assets after sanctions relief was much lower, at a little more than $50 billion.

The rest, he said, was stuck in illiquid projects, including more than 50 projects with China, or in outstanding loans Iranian entities could not repay. Because those assets were reserves, not an annual budget line, Iran would still need a buffer to defend the rial. Of the portion it spent, he said the vast majority would go to a mountain of debts and domestic needs more than ten times as large as the funds it could freely use.

Valiollah Seif, then governor of Iran’s central bank, put accessible overseas holdings at $29 billion: $23 billion in bank foreign exchange and $6 billion of government money. He said figures above $100 billion folded in $35 billion already allocated for oil projects and $22 billion held as security deposits in Chinese banks. Richard Nephew, a sanctions scholar at Columbia University, has noted you can reach $150 billion only if you add every class of money sanctions made hard to touch.

THE FROZEN-ASSET TALLY, SIDE BY SIDE

Those rows are not four measurements of one pot. The political number counts everything that was hard to move. Treasury counted what Tehran could spend. Seif counted what his own bank said was free. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Roubini Global Economics counted a wider book of foreign assets, including oil escrow accounts created after the Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2012 forced buyers to park payments abroad.

The $1.7 Billion Left Geneva as Banknotes

The cash Trump described was a separate legal case. On January 17, 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States and Iran had settled a long outstanding claim at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague. The claim covered a $400 million trust fund Iran had used to buy U.S. military equipment before 1979. After the revolution the gear was never delivered, and the money sat in litigation from 1981.

Iran would receive the $400 million balance plus a roughly $1.3 billion compromise on interest, Kerry said, a total of $1.7 billion. President Barack Obama said Iran would be returned its own funds, including appropriate interest, but much less than the amount Iran sought. Kerry added that some 4,700 private U.S. claims against Iran had already been resolved at the same tribunal, with more than $2.5 billion paid to U.S. nationals and companies.

Paul Ahern, Treasury’s assistant general counsel for enforcement and intelligence, told a House subcommittee on September 8, 2016, how the notes moved. The $400 million came from the Foreign Military Sales Trust Fund. Treasury, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wired it on January 14, converted it, and physically took Swiss franc banknotes to Geneva. On January 17, Treasury handed them to a Central Bank of Iran official for transfer to Tehran, the same day Iran released American prisoners.

The $1.3 billion interest came from the Judgment Fund, the account Congress uses to pay settlements when no other pot exists. A European bank converted it and, Ahern said, disbursed the funds as banknotes to a Central Bank official in two loads, on January 22 and February 5. No dollars moved from a U.S. account to Iran. Ahern said cash was the method the central banks preferred, because even after the nuclear deal Iran doubted it could use a wire.

HOW THE HAGUE CASH MOVED

1. January 14, 2016: Treasury helps wire $400 million from the Foreign Military Sales Trust Fund toward conversion into Swiss francs.
2. January 16, 2016: Implementation Day of the nuclear deal; nuclear-related sanctions relief begins.
3. January 17, 2016: Swiss franc notes are handed in Geneva to a Central Bank of Iran official; Kerry announces the $1.7 billion settlement; American prisoners leave Iran.
4. January 22 and February 5, 2016: Euro banknotes covering the $1.3 billion interest are paid in two installments.

Trump’s barrels and boxes were an embellishment. The load was packed on pallets, the way bulk cash is usually shipped. His $1.8 billion was $100 million high.

Who Captured the Unfrozen Money?

The Guards and the missile force captured a larger share of Iran’s post-deal budget, while bin Salman’s unnamed highway never showed up in the public accounts. Henry Rome, then a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, rebuilt the budgets from Iranian planning documents and warned against converting rials at fantasy rates. In his 2023 study, inflation-adjusted defense spending grew 24 percent between 2015 and 2017, as oil exports recovered and frozen currency became easier to reach.

Rome also found the reverse. After Washington left the deal on May 8, 2018, actual defense spending fell 22 percent between 2017 and 2019, once inflation is stripped out. Iran spent less on defense in 2019 than it had in 2015. The surge and the crash both tracked sanctions, which is the pattern a reader can hold without pretending every rial came from a single unlocked account.

Szubin had argued the unfrozen reserves would be swallowed by debts, imports, and a currency buffer. Oil revenue rising at the same time still left the government with more money to allocate. Parliament then chose the Guards.

Parliament Wrote the Hague Cash Into the Defense Bill

Saeed Ghasseminejad, then a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, read the 2016-2017 military budget after Iran’s Guardian Council confirmed it on May 18, 2016. He put the package at $19 billion across the Revolutionary Guard, the regular military, and the Defense Ministry.

WHERE THE 2016-17 MILITARY PACKAGE POINTED

• Armed forces line: $11.3 billion was earmarked for annual armed forces budgets.
• Discretionary projects: Parliament allowed $5 billion for military projects chosen by the military apparatus.
• Service buyouts: The military could raise $1 billion in fees from Iranians who paid to skip conscription.
• Hague cash: The budget let the government give the military $1.7 billion from the January financial settlement.

Patrick Clawson, research director at the Washington Institute, recorded the same $1.7 billion as a source for the 2016-17 security budget, alongside the conscription fees. That is the cleanest documentary link between the pallet money and the forces bin Salman named.

The next Iranian year pushed more of the official defense bill toward the Guards. Ghasseminejad wrote that the 2017-2018 budget allocated $7.4 billion to the IRGC, 53 percent of a $14 billion defense total, and a larger increase than any other military organization received. In July 2017, after the U.S. Senate moved toward new missile sanctions, parliament added more than $600 million, reported as 20 trillion rials or $609 million, split evenly between the missile program and the Qods Force, the Guard unit that works abroad.

Missile Tests Did Not Slow After Implementation Day

The nuclear deal capped parts of the nuclear file. It did not cap ballistic missiles. The State Department said in October 2018 that the pace of Iranian missile launches did not fall after Implementation Day, and that Tehran kept making the missile force a priority.

That record is what Riyadh had predicted in 2015, when Israeli and Gulf officials argued that unlocked oil money would move through Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Yemen’s Houthis. Fungible cash makes the last mile hard to audit. A rial spent on imports still frees a rial at home. Rome’s inflation-adjusted rise is the closest public measure of the choice Tehran made while the money was easier to get.

Bin Salman has used that record as an earlier warning about the Obama-era bargain and as a brief for a harder line. The accounting correction, that the United States did not mail $150 billion of taxpayer cash, does not answer his highway question. It also does not erase Szubin’s forecast that most unlocked reserves would be eaten by debts. Both things sat in the same budget year.

The Highway Question Outlived the Deal

Eight years after that April 2018 burst, the $150 billion line still circulates as if it were a U.S. shipment in the dark. On X it is still common to hear that Obama gave Iran American cash. The rarer posts that separate frozen oil receipts from the $1.7 billion Hague notes do not travel with the video.

The usable slice Treasury put at a little more than $50 billion was large enough to matter and smaller than the slogan. Iran’s own budget then pointed the Hague settlement at the military, raised the Guards’ share of official defense spending, and added a missile and Qods Force top-up the following summer. Rome’s ledgers show that burst reversing once U.S. sanctions returned.

Bin Salman is still waiting on the highway. The defense bills are already on paper.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did the United States Give Iran $150 Billion Under the 2015 Nuclear Deal?

No U.S. appropriation moved $150 billion to Tehran. The figure is a high-end tally of Iranian assets stuck in foreign banks. About $1.97 billion in Iranian assets frozen inside the United States stayed blocked under older orders and were not released with the nuclear deal.

What Was the $1.7 Billion Cash Payment to Iran in 2016?

It closed a Hague tribunal case over a Shah-era arms fund Iran had already paid into. Through the same tribunal, Iran had already paid more than $2.5 billion to U.S. nationals and companies over the first 20 years of claims, a flow Kerry cited when he announced the 2016 settlement.

Why Was the Settlement Paid in Foreign Cash Instead of Dollars?

Sanctions had cut Iran out of dollar banking, and Tehran wanted notes it could spend at once. The Foreign Military Sales account had held about $600 million until a 1990 settlement returned $200 million, leaving the $400 million principal that moved in January 2016; the interest came from the Judgment Fund in euros.

Did Iran’s Defense Budget Rise After the Nuclear Deal?

Yes, then it fell when U.S. sanctions returned. Defense spending as a share of GDP moved from 3.2 percent in 2015 to 3.5 percent in 2017, then to 2.9 percent in 2019, in Rome’s inflation-adjusted reconstruction, a path that matches the deal’s opening and the 2018 U.S. exit.