Meanwhile, the United States has imposed sanctions against 11 individuals and entities involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program as a result of Tehran’s firing of a medium-range ballistic missile.
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The US Treasury Department said it had blacklisted the UAE-based Mabrooka Trading, and its owner Hossein Pournaghshband for helping Iran’s produce carbon fibre for the program.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry says the country will continue to enhance its missile capabilities in defiance of fresh U.S. sanctions over the Islamic Republic’s missile program. In addition to the prisoner swap, the USA lifted economic sanctions against Iran as part of the nuclear accord.
Obama said that although the Iran deal was never meant to resolve all problems between the US and Iran, it had now created a window “to try to resolve important issues”.
The new sanctions were announced shortly after a plane carrying Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and two other American citizens, freed in a prisoner exchange, arrived in Switzerland.
A United Nations resolution passed in July 2015 “called upon” Iran to refrain from ballistic missile testing as part of the pending nuclear agreement. It is not about reducing a nuclear threat, but about making Iran more vulnerable in a hostile region. The President, like Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday, the ongoing negotiations with Iran aided conversations that yielded the release of 10 American sailors who drifted into restricted water as well as the release of five Americans who were detained illegally in Iran.
As well as California-born Rezaian, sentenced to unspecified jail time previous year having been tried for espionage, Iran has been holding three other Iranian-American citizens. Tehran has said it will carry on with the missile program despite the new USA sanctions.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano announced Saturday that Iran completed necessary preparatory steps to start implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
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The president said a deal between the United States and Iran at The Hague, in which Iran received $400 million in funds frozen since 1981 plus $1.3 billion in interest, could save the United States billions of dollars that Iran was pursuing.
