New U.S. guidance on Iran sanctions seeks to reassure banks

By Joel Schectman and Yeganeh Torbati WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New guidance from the Obama administration offers reassurance to foreign banks which have been skittish about doing U.S. dollar transactions with Iran, lawyers and former sanctions officials said on Monday. The guidance comes after months of complaints from Tehran, which says that remaining U.S. sanctions have frightened away trade partners and robbed Iran of the benefits it was promised under the nuclear deal it concluded with world powers last year. The guidelines, issued by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control on Friday, clarify that non-U.S. banks can do dollar trades with Iran, provided those transactions don't pass through financial institutions in the United States.

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