Holding that money for a legitimate government sounds interesting. Did you read my link in Comment #16. That article said we could not use US dollars to pay the money to Iran. Rather we had to gather up non dollar money that had come into our possession overseas. This should be easy enough to check from other sources if you don’t trust my link’s publisher. Many years ago I worked for an NGO with offices in South America and the Caribbean. We had AID contracts in various countries. When we had to fund a local program we had to use “counterpart” funds, which were non US dollar money which our embassies had in their possession. Sounds like still the same law in effect used for the Iran payment.
All I know is that pallets of cash were sent in the dead of night by plane to Iran’s mullahs.
Not liking it.