Pezeshkian: Iran's Money Is Blocked in China

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in an interview with Fox News on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, published early on Friday, September 25, 2026, that one of Iran's problems is that its money is blocked in China and that it cannot even move out the revenue from goods it exported there, let alone use those funds to pay another party elsewhere in the world.

Pezeshkian also said Iran and Trump had reached an agreement that was signed and that Tehran still wants to continue on that path. According to Al Jazeera, he said on Thursday, September 24, that Iran wants the US to return to the Memorandum of Understanding by early November, before the midterm elections; Al Jazeera reports that the MoU lapsed in mid-August without a peace deal.

China is Iran's largest trading partner, and access to export currency revenue is one of the main drivers of foreign currency supply in the domestic market.