Iran condemns new US sanctions over missile test

The other Americans released were Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, whose name had not been previously made public, according to the Associated Press.

The UN atomic agency minutes earlier confirmed it had issued a report verifying that Iran carried out those steps, which significantly scale back its nuclear infrastructure.

The four prisoners were released as part of an exchange which included the release of seven Iranians and Iranian-Americans in USA custody.

Obama said the nuclear deal with Iran will prevent that country from making a bomb. This despite the fact that Iran’s neighbors Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia all have such missiles and Israeli and U.S. missiles can also reach Tehran.

Iran also agreed to work to locate American Robert Levinson, who vanished during a trip to Iran in 2007.

Iran denounced new economic sanctions imposed by the United States over its ballistic missile program as “illegitimate” and without “legal or moral legitimacy”.

From the future of U.S.-Iranian relations to the fate of another missing American, the release could mark just the beginning of more political maneuvering to come.

The lifting of sanctions and the prisoner deal considerably reduce the hostility between Tehran and Washington that has shaped the Middle East since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.

“We have to compare the American system and European system, and to see if there are new sanctions to take or not, and this exercise will be implemented this week”, Mr Fabius said during a visit to Abu Dhabi.

Shortly afterward, the three left for a U.S. military base in Germany, arriving there later yesterday, a U.S. State Department official said.

U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) met with Hekmati and his family in Landstuhl, Germany, and told CNN on Monday that Hekmati was “a strong guy with a great spirit who’s been through an very bad ordeal, but has maintained that great spirit”. 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 global markets for the last five years.

White House officials said negotiations took place over a 14-month period, majority held in Switzerland, and they were driven by concerns that the Americans potentially faced many years in prison.

US President Barack Obama praised the deal as a breakthrough in diplomacy, but noted that “profound differences” with Tehran remained over its “destabilising activities”.

The Iranian president described the implementation of the deal on Tehran’s nuclear program as a big victory for Iranian diplomacy.