Officials from the Rouhani administration, hoping for a favorable outcome in next month’s parliamentary elections, have been touting the achievements of the nuclear deal, which ended a decadelong crisis between Iran and Western countries. This has lifted the sanctions and Iran’s economy will now open up.
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Khamenei wrote that Rouhani should be “careful that the opposing side completely fulfills its commitments”, and that “statements by some American politicians in the last two, three days have caused suspicions”.
Describing the accord a unique example in the history of diplomacy, Rouhani said Iran was committed not to pursue nuclear weapons.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury had been planning to announce the penalties in late December, but held off after Iran’s foreign minister said they could have derailed the prisoner exchange that took place this weekend, U.S. officials said. Many Americans see U.S.-Iranian relations through the prism of Iranians storming the U.S. embassy in 1979 and holding 52 Americans hostage for more than a year.
[Obama] said the United States would “remain steadfast in opposing Iran’s destabilising behaviour elsewhere” – such as its missile tests.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, right, with International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Yukiya Amano in Tehran on Monday. The economic sanctions imposed are supposed to prevent those involved in the Iranian missiles program from using the USA banking system, but is being protested on grounds of unfairness.
They include slashing by two-thirds its uranium centrifuges, reducing its stockpile of uranium – enough before the deal for several bombs – and removing the core of its Arak reactor, which could have given Iran weapons-grade plutonium.
The Iranians released had no ties to terrorist activity.
Iran’s recent firing of ballistic missiles despite a Security Council ban on such tests, its continuing meddling in the affairs of neighboring states through proxies, and even its release of a demeaning video last week of the captured USA sailors kneeling with their hands behind their heads are proof that the US can’t afford to let down its guard against an aggressive and still unsafe regime. Family members gathered there today to be reunited.
His remarks, quoted by Iranian state media, were made in a letter to President Hassan Rohani. Iran now produced 3 million barrels per day.
Senator Bob Corker is the first US senator to confirm reports by Reuters that there was a link between the Obama administration’s delaying sanctions over Iran’s ballistic missile program and efforts to free Americans held prisoner there.
Marie-Anne Coninsx, the European Union ambassador to Canada, said Tuesday that “all sanctions which are related to the nuclear file” have been lifted by the 28-country bloc. They haven’t, the writer continued, objected to Iran’s aggression in Arab countries in order to protect the nuclear deal.
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“We’re not going to waver in the defence of our security or that of our allies and partners”, he said.
