Kerry: Captive Americans raised at all meetings with Iran

The president said he hopes the nuclear deal will encourage Iran to stop sponsoring terrorist actors in the Middle East and said the U.S. will try to gain greater cooperation from the Islamic Republic on ending violent unrest in Syria and Yemen. “And there’s a permanent prohibition on Iran ever having a nuclear weapon”, Obama said.

The chanting by several hundred hard-liners came as conservative cleric Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani was leading the Friday prayers at the Tehran University campus.

The agreement requires Iran to limit its nuclear program and ensure it is only for peaceful purposes in exchange for a lifting of sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

The supreme leader’s comments reflected his long standing position that Iran’s engagement with the six powers was exclusively to reach a nuclear deal that was in its national interest.

“Shattering something like this with the British and the French and the Germans – that has consequences”, said Ilan Goldenberg, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former Obama State Department official.

“The president did sit down and have a discussion with the Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to discuss a range of regional and bilateral issues, including the recent historic agreement that was announced this week”, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Among them: resistance from longtime American allies, an unraveling of the carefully crafted worldwide sanctions, and damage to USA standing with the rest of the world, according to foreign policy experts.

But Clinton may find that once the debate over the Iran deal gets underway, significant parts of her base, Jewish voters and swing Democrats, could turn against her.

“If they are afraid of us having entry because we might find something years later, I can assure you our intelligence community is completely comfortable that 24 days is not enough time for them to be able to evade our technical means, our capacity to observe”, Mr Kerry said.

The recently incorporated 501(c)(4) non-profit organization, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, is being run by a political operative tied to AIPAC and has received support from the pro-Israel lobbying outfit.

However, the ayatollah’s remarks also praised the Iranian negotiators who struck the deal.

“This deal will make America and the world safer and more secure”, Mr. Obama said in his weekly address.

― File picLONDON, July 18 ― A landmark nuclear deal with Teheran does not represent an alignment with Iran, British Prime Minister David Cameron said in an interview yesterday.

“The sanctions regime would collapse if Congress were to kill this deal”.