Reza Zarrab, a businessman who admitted conspiring with a Turkish bank to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions by trading its oil for gold, was sentenced Tuesday to time already served after cooperating with investigators in a case that strained relations between the U.S. and Turkey. Zarrab has testified that he paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Turkey to facilitate the sanctions-busting scheme. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, publicly disparaged the corruption allegations as an American plot to “blackmail” Turkey, and lobbied the administrations of three U.S. presidents to halt the case. ... (full story)