Iran emerged from years of economic isolation when the United States and other countries lifted crippling sanctions against the Islamic republic.
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The United States announced the new penalties Sunday on 11 Iranian companies and individuals for a ballistic missile test conducted in October that it says violated a United Nations ban. “And we believe that this is a very positive settlement for us”.
It was playing more politics in announcing new, minor sanctions (a slap over Iran’s latest illegal missile tests) once the plane carrying the hostages was safely in the air.
“We could advance by engaging directly with the Iranian government”, Obama said in a statement from the White House. Washington, he said, suffers from an “addiction to pressure, addiction to coercion, addiction to sanctions”. Several Iranian-Americans held in USA prisons after being charged or convicted for sanctions violations have also been released, their lawyers told Reuters on Sunday. The Iranian president also said the deal was a “turning point” for Iran’s economy, which was severely weakened by having been shut out of global markets for the last five years.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said Washington’s sales of weapons to allies in the Middle East, worth tens of billions of dollars each year, was used to commit “war crimes against Palestinian, Lebanese and most recently, Yemeni citizens”.
The U.S. State Department, however, is sticking by the official reported count.
Khamenei further stressed that the removal of sanctions was a result of the Iranian people’s resistance.
The Obama Administration is trying to play up the growing rapprochement with Iran, with hopes that the nuclear deal will lead to the resolution of more regional disputes.
Neither ISIS nor Nusra Front – al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate – were represented at last month’s opposition meeting in Saudi Arabia which agreed to work towards peace talks with President Bashar al-Assad.
Asked about conservative voices within Iran, Zarif said: “Iran is not a monolith, I think Americans would recognize that… just like the United States is not”.
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“The question of where Iran spends the money has always been one where you have some willingness on Iran’s part to put national security issues well before its own development and domestic population”, Cordesman said. In July, 2015, Iran entered into an agreement with six countries – the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, committing to scale down its nuclear programme.
