The UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced on Saturday that Iran complied with all the demands stipulated in the July 2015 nuclear deal, prompting the debilitating economic sanctions, imposed on the country in the past decade, to be lifted.
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“The implementation of the JCPOA is not a loss for any country”, Mr Rouhani said, referring to the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”, the official name for Tehran’s nuclear agreement with the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russian Federation. “We believe that Iran will be able to access approximately $50 billion out of a reported $100 billion in holdings it has overseas”.
Uzi Arad, a former Netanyahu national security adviser, said Israel’s naysaying on the Iran deal had eroded its leverage – especially with Obama, an outgoing Democratic president who saw the rightist premier as siding with his Republican rivals. Iran has always denied the charge that it was seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
The lifting of sanctions on Iran will allow the Islamic republic to raise its oil exports, worsening a production glut that has sent oil prices crashing.
The implementation of the nuclear agreement with Iran will end worldwide sanctions against the country over restrictions on its nuclear activities.
India, which had substantially reduced its oil imports from Iran under U.S. pressure, can now freely import oil from Tehran, but would now have to pay for it in dollars.
Bahram Mechanich and Tooraj Faridi, both of Houston, and Khosrow Afghahi, of Los Angeles, were released, along with four other Iranians held in other parts of the U.S., Mechanich’s attorney Joel Androphy said.
The Israeli premier strongly opposed the nuclear deal with Israel’s arch-foe Iran and argued that it would not prevent Teheran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Vahid Salemi/AP Iranian Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has participated in the multi-party talks that eventually led to the lifting of sanctions against Iran.
Meanwhile, reports say the two countries freed a number of citizens as part of a prisoner exchange agreement.
Nader Modanlo, sentenced to eight years in prison in 2013 for helping Iran launch its first satellite into orbit, was released from a Virginia prison Sunday morning, his attorney Kelly Kramer confirmed via text message.
“Iran has undertaken significant steps that many, and I do mean many, people doubted would ever come to pass”.
Iran will “deepen its coordination” with the United States to locate a Jewish-American man missing since 2007, President Barack Obama said, while sounding an otherwise triumphant note at the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal.
Hillary Clinton on Sunday said the nuclear deal with Iran has “lowered the threat” posed by the nation, but repeated her call for new sanctions to hold the nation “accountable” for its ballistic missile program.
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In addition it put Iran and the United States on the road to better relations some 35 years after the Islamic revolution that toppled the US-backed shah, and at a particularly explosive time in the Middle East.
