“Iran’s missile program has never been created to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons”, said foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari (pictured above), according to state news agency INSA.
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Despite an extraordinary diplomacy that saw the release of 5 Americans held by Iran, Washington has announced new penalties on several Iranian individuals and businesses over Tehran’s ballistic missile program. The prisoner release followed the easing of sanctions against Iran after Iran agreed to slow its nuclear weapons program.
The landmark Iran nuclear agreement, struck July 14 after decades of hostility, defused the likelihood of US or Israeli military action against Iran, something Zarif alluded to.
While Obama emphasized that the US continues to have deep concerns about Iran’s destabilizing actions in the Middle East and its threats to Israel, he also opened up the prospect of Tehran working more cooperatively with the rest of the world.
Iran said Saturday that four Iranian dual nationals had been freed as part of a prisoner exchange in line with national interests at the order of the country’s top security committee.
The deal was finalized hours after the United Nations reported that Iran had made good on pledges to significantly back away from atomic bomb-making capacity and unlocked some $100 billion in frozen Iranian assets overseas.
The president described the release of six Iranian-Americans and one Iranian charged in the United States as a “reciprocal, humanitarian gesture” that was a one-time event. The first two being the implementation of the nuclear deal and the freeing of the Americans imprisoned in Iran, including Washington Post reporter correspondent Jason Rezaian, and the third was the settlement of a years-long lawsuit between Iran and the US. 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 worldwide markets for the last five years.
The US had launched the sanctions on Sunday amid worries that Iran’s ballistic missile program would be used to carry atomic warheads.
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“Iran has undertaken significant steps that many people doubted would ever come to pass”, clearing the way for sanctions to end, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Vienna late Saturday after Iran’s compliance with the agreement was certified. “We’ve seen the results”, Obama said.
