February 18, 2022
Ramin Toloui has been sworn in as the new US assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, making him the highest ranking Iranian-American in the Biden Administration and giving him a role in enforcing US sanctions on Iran.
In a tweet February 2, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the swearing-in.
Toloui, 48, was born and raised in Iowa. His mother, Alyce, is American and his father, Ahmad, Iranian. Toloui earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and an MPhil from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Toloui was the assistant secretary of the treasury for international finance and development in the Obama Administration. He was nominated for his new post last July 30 and confirmed by the Senate December 16 on a 76-13 vote, with all the nay votes from Republicans.
The main goals of Toloui’s new post are to pave the way for American companies doing business in global markets, and to leverage economic tools to deny financing to terrorists, human rights abusers and corrupt officials. As such, his office plays a major role in enforcing US sanctions, though it does not draft sanctions policy.
Before taking up his new post, Toloui was a professor of finance at Stanford University, and his research focused on international economic policy, financial crises, and the economic impact of artificial intelligence.
After his education, Toloui joined the Treasury Department as a civil servant in 1999 serving as deputy director and international economist in the Office of Central and Southeastern Europe from 1999 to 2001, then as senior adviser to the undersecretary for international affairs from 2001 to 2003 and director of the office of the Western Hemisphere from 2003 to 2006.
He then switched to the private sector where he was global co-head of Emerging Markets Portfolio Management at the Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), overseeing more than $100 billion in investments until joining the Obama Administration in 2014.