After Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, his administration is now due to re-impose a second batch of sanctions against Iran on November 4, targeting the country's oil and banking sectors, including secondary sanctions on financial messaging services to the Central Bank of Iran and some other financial institutions.
According to the Financial Times, finance ministers of the three European signatories to the nuclear deal — France, Germany and the UK — as well as Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU commission vice-president responsible for financial services policy, are going to press Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, at the IMF gathering in Bali this week, to exempt Swift from Iran sanctions.
Meanwhile, German foreign minister Heiko Maas has argued that Europeans could create their own rival to Swift based on the euro rather than the dollar. Russia and China are both pursuing their own systems, the Financial Times adds.
MA/PR