Iran after recovering payments owed by Bahrain too: Vice president

“In addition to South Korea, we have payments owed by Bahrain as well that we are seeking to recover,” Dehqan told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

He also voiced hope that the Iranian Parliament would soon ratify a motion forwarded by the administration to appoint arbiters in a dispute with South Korea over frozen Iranian assets.

The administration of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi forwarded that motion to the Parliament for ratification on Saturday. The motion was devised on a proposal by the vice presidency for legal affairs.

Dehqan said that motion relates to a South Korean debt of seven billion dollars.

After US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from a multilateral deal with Iran in 2018, he imposed a range of sanctions on the Islamic Republic as well as on third countries doing business with Tehran.

Since then, the seven billion dollars in Iranian assets, paid by South Korea to purchase Iranian oil, has been frozen in South Korean banks.

Several attempts to unfreeze the assets have failed so far.