Washington should spend Iran’s frozen billions on satellite internet for its people

Washington and Tehran have signed the Islamabad memorandum, and one term dominates the rest: the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian reserves once a final deal is struck. President Trump has signaled that these assets will move only upon a finalized agreement. The debate has fixed on whether and when to hand the money over. It has skipped the prior question — whose money it is, and what would actually serve them.

An estimated $100 billion in Iranian assets immobilized abroad are not the private treasury of a ruling clique. These reserves represent the accumulated product of a nation’s oil, commerce and labor. International law recognizes the Islamic Republic as a sovereign representative. However, a regime that governs by domestic terror and exports regional instability is a usurper of the national patrimony, not its legitimate steward. Returning this capital as a reward for aggression represents a profound misallocation of assets. This choice ratifies the regime’s most audacious fiction: that the Iranian people and their jailers share identical interests.

Washington has recently rejected this fiction. When the Afghan Republic collapsed in 2021, the United States froze approximately $7 billion in central bank reserves. Rather than surrendering these assets to the Taliban or liquidating them for creditors, Washington established the Fund for the Afghan People. This Swiss-based trust insulated $3.5 billion for the population. It successfully denied the sanctioned regime a single dollar. When 9/11 creditors attempted to seize these reserves, federal courts intervened. The judiciary refused to treat central bank assets as Taliban property available to satisfy judgments.

A year prior, the U.S., the European Union, and the United Nations built a comparable mechanism for Venezuela. This architecture ring-fenced more than $3 billion from the Maduro regime’s grasp. The operational template is proven. The statutory authority — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — is firmly established. The core principle remains settled: the frozen wealth of an illegitimate government can be legally preserved for the nation it misrules.

If these frozen assets belong to the Iranian population, policymakers must identify what serves them most. Digital connectivity is a must-have. The regime’s survival hinges on information isolation. The Islamic Republic relies on systematic network blackouts to govern. It completely severed........

© The Hill