Iran denounces United States sanctions on missile programme

Mr Amano met the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, and was to hold talks with President Hassan Rouhani to discuss monitoring and verifying Iran’s commitments under the agreement.

This will allow Iran to satisfy pent-up demand for goods and services that it had trouble obtaining at affordable prices under sanctions, from aircraft to factory machinery, medicines and some consumer goods such as cosmetics and branded clothing.

But it is highly unlikely that the momentum on the nuclear agreement will translate into substantial foreign policy shifts for Iran, particularly when it comes to other intractable conflicts in the region, US officials say.

The exchange followed the lifting of most worldwide sanctions on Iran under a deal US President Barack Obama said cut off Tehran’s path to a nuclear bomb. “Full cooperation from Iran is also needed”, he said. A fifth prisoner, American student Matthew Trevithick, was released separately on Saturday, a USA official said.

Diplomacy – painstaking negotiations led by Secretary of State John Kerry over many months – did produce results.

Iran’s supreme leader has welcomed the lifting of sanctions against Tehran.

Ten US sailors, who were aboard two patrol craft, were detained for 15 hours by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on January 12 when they inadvertently entered Iranian territorial waters.

Iran freed four Iranian Americans, including Washington Post reported Jason Rezaian, as the United States pardoned or dropped charges against 21 Iranians in connection with sanctions-related cases.

Rezaian had spent 445 days in captivity in Iran, the longest time an American has been held captive in the country, even longer than the American hostages in the 1979-80 Iran hostage crisis.

The nuclear deal will also open up business in the 79-million-strong country. Non-nuclear economic sanctions imposed by the USA remain in place, forbidding American citizens and firms from trading with Iran.

“Tonnes of uranium have been shipped out of Iran, thousands of centrifuges have been taken out of use and the core has been removed from the Arak reactor”.

What everyday people in Iran are saying about this news.