The prisoner exchange between the United States and Iran won praise from some Iranian American organizations on Sunday, even as the USA imposed new sanctions on those who supply Iran’s ballistic missile system.
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President Obama said this morning that Iran has held up its part of the nuclear deal signed over the summer.
His release was reported by Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, which reported the inmates were freed in a prisoner swap deal.
Neither US nor Swiss officials had explicitly named those on board the plane, but McGurk’s tweet confirmed reports that the three freed prisoners were Rezaian, Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor, and former US Marine Amir Hekmati. From there, the three are headed to the US.
“It’s the first time, 37 years after Iran’s 1979 revolution, that Iran has succeeded in détente with the West, specifically with the US, despite radical and hard-line opponents both inside Iran and America as well as the Israeli lobby and Saudi opposition”, Zibakalam said.
$400 million in payments for military equipment that the United States sold to the shah of Iran and never delivered when he was overthrown. “Further restrictions concern in particular technical services for Iranian cargo aircraft and the fulfilment of certain demands” the cabinet said.
The U.S. and Iran are entering a new phase in their relationship.
While the appearance of the back-to-back sanctions announcements – lifting nuclear sanctions and adding missile sanctions – might seem to suggest that Washington was merely recategorizing old penalties, they are not comparable.
As the nuclear deal with Tehran goes into effect, many Middle Eastern countries fear a newly emboldened Iran, flush with cash and worldwide recognition, will grow more aggressive with what they see as meddling in conflicts across the region. European Union goods trade with Iran fell to €11.7 billion in 2014 ($12.8 billion), down from close to €28 billion in 2011, according to the bloc.
As he presented a draft budget for the next fiscal year to parliament, Rohani said the deal was an opportunity for Iran’s economy to cut its “umbilical cord” to oil while prices were low.
Officials in Bahrain, a Sunni-ruled but Shiite-majority country, have accused Iran of attempting to smuggle in weapons in recent months.
But Parsi said Iran must do more to keep Americans from feeling threatened while in that country and she said Iran has much work to do for its own people.
The implementation of a historic nuclear deal with world powers is expected to pave the way for a new economic reality in Iran, now freed from harsh global sanctions. “If they don’t, we will continue to enforce our sanctions and continue to have very strong differences”.
Iran could boost its Gross Domestic Product growth to around five per cent in 2016-17, from nearly zero now, says the International Monetary Fund.
US companies are still consulting the government and lawyers to assess the conditions they could be allowed to Iran.
On Saturday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from CT, called for sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program.
“We have consistently made clear that the United States will vigorously press sanctions against Iranian activities outside of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – including those related to Iran’s support for terrorism, regional destabilisation, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile programme”, said Adam J. Szubin, acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
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In return, most Western sanctions on Iran will start to be repealed, sending tens of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian oil money back to Tehran and opening world markets to hundreds of thousands of barrels of Iranian petroleum.
