NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {T} he Washington Post reports that the Biden Treasury Department has struck a deal with Qatar to deny Iran access to the $6 billion in Iranian oil-export revenue as to which President Biden had waived sanctions.

Does that mean I was wrong in yesterday’s column (and in other columns on the subject that I cited) when I argued that Qatar would never agree to deny the funds to Iran? That’s not yet clear — we need to see the fine print and hear from Qatar regarding its understanding of what it has agreed to do.

The Post says (my italics):

U.S. officials and the Qatari government have agreed to stop Iran from accessing a $6 billion account for humanitarian assistance in light of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told House Democrats on Thursday, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private remarks.

The decision not to permit access to the money comes just a few weeks after the U.S. and Iranian governments announced a deal to set up the humanitarian assistance as part of a prisoner swap aimed at easing hostilities in the region. U.S. officials had to approve each transaction under the agreement. The fund is financed by Iranian oil sales.

If this is all that has been agreed, then it is not a change at all. It has been the Biden administration’s position all along that Iran was not going to get access to these funds — that is, physically possess the money to spend unilaterally as it chose. Instead, the money is on deposit with the central bank of Qatar. As I explained in my columns, the idea was that, without Iran’s touching the funds, Qatar would directly disburse payments to third-party (i.e., non-Iranian-government) vendors of humanitarian goods and services, at Iran’s direction. American monitors would watch these transactions and be prepared to object if Iran tried to direct funds to unapproved purposes or in ways that could support terrorism and other provocative activities.

The Post’s report does not say that Qatar is refusing to disburse the funds to third parties at Iran’s direction, or that the transfer of the $6 billion is otherwise rescinded. Unless that happens, this announced agreement with Qatar would just be a feint. The issue has never been Iran’s direct access to the funds. It is whether Iran can benefit from them.

Obviously, whether Iran possesses the funds or can decide to whom Qatar can disburse the funds, it would have the capacity to spend them on its governmental needs. Money being fungible, Iran could repurpose what it has already allocated to those governmental needs — i.e., use it to support terrorist operations by Hamas, Hezbollah, and its other jihadist proxies.

I hope I am wrong and that the Biden administration really has achieved a solid agreement by which sharia-supremacist Qatar freezes the funds so that they cannot be used for the benefit of Qatar’s ally, sharia-supremacist Iran. That would be an excellent development. . . . But I’ll believe it when I see it.