October 19, 2025 | The National Interest
Why Iran Won’t Follow FATF Counter-Terrorism Rules
As usual, Tehran will make surface-level concessions and play for time. But it will never commit to genuine counter-terrorism regulation.
October 19, 2025 | The National Interest
Why Iran Won’t Follow FATF Counter-Terrorism Rules
As usual, Tehran will make surface-level concessions and play for time. But it will never commit to genuine counter-terrorism regulation.
Excerpt
The Islamic Republic of Iran is touting its decision to conditionally ratify the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) as a diplomatic breakthrough and a signal that Tehran is finally ready to cooperate with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). In doing so, it may regain access to the global financial system. The move is nothing of the sort, and no one should buy it.
Tehran’s move is a calculated deception. By ratifying the CFT only, as its statement says, “in accordance with the Constitution” and “[Irans’s] domestic laws,” the regime has effectively exempted itself from the treaty’s core obligations. That caveat allows Tehran to keep financing the same groups and militias that have made it the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
Under FATF standards, accession to the CFT must be unconditional. Iran’s self-declared reservation guts the convention’s central requirement: to criminalize the financing of terrorism “by any means, directly or indirectly.”
The Islamic Republic insists that organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are not terrorists but “resistance movements.” Its conditional ratification formalizes that double standard. Iran claims compliance on paper while continuing to bankroll these groups in practice, a violation not just of the treaty’s spirit but of its plain text.
Saeed Ghasseminejad and Toby Dershowitz are senior advisors at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy. Follow the authors on X @tobydersh and @SGhasseminejad.