President Barack Obama said that while the nuclear accord with Iran doesn’t resolve all conflicts between the USA and the Islamic Republic, it is a vindication of his emphasis on using tough diplomacy rather than military confrontation.
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“Today is a good day”, Obama said in a White House speech.
As the Obama administration welcomed the implementation of a major nuclear deal with Iran on Saturday, it also prepared to close the book on another long-standing issue between the two countries: a decades-old legal claim.
The Obama administration, which was preparing for the sanctions in December, postponed them following the warning, the report added, citing US and congressional officials briefed on the swap. “We had no business dragging this out”.
President Obama hailed a deal that led to the
release of five Americans from Iranian custody – including a MA man – as “historic progress through diplomacy”, even as he announced new economic sanctions over Iran’s ballistic missile testing. Various U.S. sanctions against Tehran remain in place, and Iran remains on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Israel, widely assumed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state and Iran’s arch-foe, repeatedly slammed the agreement.
Mr Obama said he was hopeful the events signalled an opportunity for Iran to work more cooperatively with the rest of the world.
“We Iranians have reached out to the world … have opened a new chapter in the relations of Iran with the world”, Mr Rouhani said.
KOMID is North Korea’s primary arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons, and has been sanctioned by the USA and the United Nations.
The action taken Saturday allowed Iran to re-enter the world’s oil markets; according to some estimates, by the end of the year its exports may increase by a million barrels a day, yielding roughly $30 million a day in revenue at current prices.
Obama, though, said he had spent much time with the families of the released prisoners, and was thrilled to welcome them back to the U.S.
“After the nuclear deal was complete, the discussions between our governments escalated”, Obama said on Sunday.
Earlier on Sunday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a speech to the Iranian people that the country had entered a “new chapter” in its history.
The US has imposed fresh sanctions on Iranian companies and individuals over a recent ballistic missile test.
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He also admitted that the U.S. sailors, who were released promptly by Iran after the incursion, had “accidentally strayed into Iranian waters”.
