Ahead of the so-called Implementation Day, a USA federal report found only six foreign companies were working in the Iranian energy sector past year.
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On Wednesday, Iran freed 10 American sailors.
The IAEA’s Board of Governors passed a resolution in December ending its long-running inquiry into whether Iran once had a secret nuclear weapons program or so-called “possible military dimensions” (PMD).
A few days after the deal was announced Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to social media to mock his new best friend tweeting, “US pres. said he could knock out Iran’s army”.
“The core was initially supposed to be cut into parts, but we did not accept this as we want to keep it as the symbol of Iran’s nuclear industry”, he said. They underwent medical checks and the U.S. Navy said in a statement that “there are no indications that the sailors were harmed during their brief detention”.
There was precedent for such a standoff to further deteriorate. In an acute embarrassment for the British government, the service members were paraded before then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and critics said their apologies were extracted under duress. One school of thought in Iran holds that America’s policies and nature are based on bullying and not rationality.
“These are already situations which, as everyone here knows. have the ability to, if not properly guided, to get out of control”, said Kerry, who contacted Zarif, his Iranian counterpart, after learning that the sailors were being held.
USA version: Boats experienced some sort of mechanical failure between Kuwait and Bahrain and ended up by mistake in Iranian waters. It is also proof of the benefits of engaging with Iran.
New York Rep. Eliot Engel, senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said he also is concerned about Iran’s recent actions, but he said the bill seemed to be aimed at embarrassing Obama by establishing requirements that would be impossible to meet.
In an Iranian television interview, one of the sailors apologized and said the boats had mistakenly entered Iranian waters.
But not safe, secure and strong enough to have deterred Iran from releasing photographs of the supposedly well-treated sailors on their knees, hands behind their heads.
But in a tweet, Zarif expressed a similar hope that future clashes could be solved in a comparably effective way. And in Tehran, Zarif tweeted that he was “happy to see dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors episode. Let’s learn from this latest example”.
The incident has dominated Iranian newspapers. They’re trading accusations over the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led intervention hasn’t uprooted the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Looming large was the nuclear deal, which both men have invested so much in and striven to protect.
Meanwhile, the European Union extended on Thursday its suspension of economic sanctions against Iran for two weeks, a technical measure to give time for the implementation of a nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers that officials say is imminent. “If it were not for the 20,000 centrifuge slap from the previous government [Ahmadinejad] they [the P5+1] would have never sat at the negotiating table”, former chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rezaei has stated.
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“Implementation day, which is the day on which Iran proves that it has sufficiently downsized its nuclear program and can begin to receive sanctions relief, is going to take place very soon, likely within the next coming days somewhere”.
