He Called the JCPOA a “Tremendous Diplomatic Breakthrough.”

On April 13, 2016, Treasury posted remarks by Acting Under Secretary Adam Szubin at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies annual forum (jl0419). The text is his, on a government site.

Quote: “The JCPOA represents a tremendous diplomatic breakthrough — a peaceful means of effectively cutting off all of Iran’s potential pathways to a nuclear weapon.” He called the result “a massive accomplishment” and said “we got the policy right.”

In the same remarks he said recent claims “that we are about to provide Iran access to the U.S. financial system are also untrue. We will not provide Iran access to the U.S. financial system and we will not restore the ‘U-turn’ authorization.” Cotton, one week later, said Secretary Lew had “all but announced” dollarization and that this contradicted Szubin’s earlier testimony. Cotton’s allegation is in the hold post. It is not upgraded here to a finding that Szubin secretly opened the dollar.

A June 24, 2016, Truman Project speech (jl0500) used similar language: “the JCPOA is a tremendous breakthrough.”