On Saturday, Obama signed an executive order to lift sanctions on Iran related to its nuclear program, the White House said.
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The release of the four Americans, including a Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, was part of a prisoner swap between Iran and the US.
Iran conducted a precision-guided ballistic missile test last October, violating a United Nations ban.
But the President said the United States would still continue to enforce sanctions against its ballistic missile program.
Hailing the implementation of the landmark Iranian nuclear deal as a “milestone”, US President Barack Obama on Sunday said every single path that Iran could have taken to build a nuclear bomb has been cut off.
“For decades our differences meant our governments hardly ever spoke – ultimately, that did not advance our interests”.
A plane carrying the three Americans who’d wished to leave Iran after the prisoner swap was completed arrived on a U.S. Air Force base in Germany after a brief stop in Switzerland.
Obama’s decision came after the IAEA confirmed Iran’s compliance of the historic nuclear deal, known as JCPOA, reached last summer.
HORSLEY: Yeah, we obviously – in exchange for these five Americans being released, the United States is freeing some Iranians who had been held in this country on sanctions violations. “Yesterday these families finally got the news they’d been waiting for”, he said referring to the U.S. nationals who have been released by Iran.
By the autumn of 2013, however, secretary of state John Kerry had met his Iranian counterpart and Barack Obama had called Mr Rouhani in what was the first direct communication between a USA and Iranian president since the 1979 Islamic revolution led to the U.S. embassy hostage taking and a diplomatic freeze. After the exchange happened yesterday, however, the USA went ahead with the sanctions anyhow. “The imprisonment of Amir and the other USA citizens held captive by Iran was unjust”.
The Obama administration had delayed the step for more than two weeks during tense negotiations to free five American prisoners, according to people familiar with the matter. “While we celebrate their return, this deal serves as piece of propaganda for both Iran and the Obama administration”.
“Iran will receive the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund, as well as a roughly $1.3 billion compromise on the interest”, he said, in a statement. “And now with its implementation, we can see clearly one of the dangers it will bring to the free world”, McCaul said in a statement.
As the White House noted in its summary of the nuclear deal, “U.S. statutory sanctions focused on Iran’s support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and missile activities will remain in effect and continue to be enforced”.
Lifting the sanctions would unfreeze a huge amount of assets, around tens of billions of US dollars, and allow Iranian oil to be sold internationally.
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But he added there are more Iranian claims pending and that the United States would try to negotiate to resolve them.
