Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on June 20 said there is no point in the Islamic Republic joining international treaty groups such as the anti-money laundering Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as they would not serve the country’s national in terest, Iran Front Page (IFP) reported.

It is not hard to imagine that Khamenei would not have made such remarks if the Iran nuclear deal had worked smoothly and secured the country at least a fair amount of the expected economic gains, but with the accord unravelling at the hands of the US Trump administration Iran’s political leaders are now wary of further facilitating treaties with the outside world in the name of easing the path for trade and investment. Europe is not seen as having delivered on its pledge to make strong efforts to salvage the nuclear deal following the unilateral withdrawal made by the US in early May and there are now real fears that Tehran is set to exit the agreement itself.

On June 10, following days of wrangling, Iran’s parliament suspended further debate on a move to include the country in the Terrorist Financing Convention (formally, the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism), a UN treaty.

“Major world powers develop international treaties based on their interests,” Khamenei reportedly said during a meeting with Iranian lawmakers in Tehran.

“[Some] member states of these conventions have no role in their development,” he added, noting that the conventions are so often ratified by allies of world powers or states intimidated by them.

Khamenei went on: “Then if an independent country like Iran refuses to join the treaty, they start criticising it, saying how come you don’t accept it while 150 others have joined?

“Some treaties have useful articles, and there’s no problem with joining them. But when we know a treaty or convention has problems, and we are not sure where it will take us to, we shouldn’t ratify it just for its positive aspects.”

Bills proposed by the government and sent for debate in parliament “should not be against the national interest”, he added.

Iran should create its own anti-money laundering bill, independent of FATF, Khamenei said.