The International Atomic Energy Agency ruled on Saturday that Iran had fulfilled last year’s landmark agreement with the United States and five other world powers to curtail its nuclear program, triggering the end of sanctions.
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Foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said Washington’s profitable sales of weaponry to the Middle East undermined the sanctions, which deny 11 companies and individuals access to the USA banking system.
On December 31, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Tehran should expand its missile program in response to threats of new U.S. sanctions.
He said the country will react to the “propagandist and harassing measures by following up on its legal missile program in earnest and further improve the country’s defense capabilities and national security”.
State TV quoted Valiollah Seif as saying Iran has transferred assets from banks in Japan and South Korea to other banks in Germany and the United Arab Emirates.
“We released seven terrorists who had helped Iran with their nuclear program, and we agreed not to prosecute another 14 terrorists for doing the same thing”.
But critics question Iran’s reliability and slammed Obama’s willingness to negotiate a prisoner trade on Saturday that saw six Iranian-Americans and one Iranian serving sentences or awaiting trial being granted clemency in what he called a “one-time gesture to Iran”.
The announcement of the new sanctions came hours after three Americans detained by Iran – including the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian – boarded a Swiss plane departing Tehran.
“On the sidelines of the nuclear negotiations, our diplomats at the highest level, including Secretary Kerry, used every meeting to push Iran to release our Americans”, the president added.
Khamenei has never endorsed repairing relations with the United States and has largely followed a similar tack to Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who dubbed America the “Great Satan”. He was flown out of Iran on Sunday along with two other freed Iranian Americans as part of a prisoner deal with Iran linked to the implementation of a landmark nuclear agreement.
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Administration officials say that if the Iranian government were to go back on the deal now, it would take more than a year for the country to create a nuclear bomb. The deal is about stopping Iran from building a nuclear weapon.
