Iran’s Khamenei welcomes sanctions lift, warns of U.S. ‘deceit’

He did not give the amount of the transfers.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cautiously welcomed on Tuesday the completion of the nuclear deal and the lifting of economic sanctions this past weekend, but he sought to dash any expectations that the event marked the beginning of a détente with the United States.

He promised to unify the exchange rate within six months, eliminating a black market in which foreign currencies, including the US dollar, are traded at 20 per cent higher than their official value.

In his first comments since the agreement was implemented, Khamenei stressed in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani the need to “guard against deceit and violations of arrogant states particularly the United States”. “We remain steadfast in opposing Iran’s destabilizing behavior elsewhere” he said. Iran says their missile program is not created to carry nuclear weapons, nor capable of carrying them. The missile program “poses a significant threat to regional and global security and it will continue to be subject to worldwide sanctions” said Adam J. Szubin the Department of the Treasury’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence in a statement. The Obama administration has touted the Iran deal as its crowning foreign policy achievement.

Accordingly, the World Bank predicted that the Iranian economy is expected to rebound from 1.9% in 2015 to 5.8% in 2016.

Obama said Iran has agreed “to deepen our coordination” in the search for Robert Levinson, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007, and who, according to his family members, was part of the discussion that led to the prisoner swap. And last fall, it twice illegally tested ballistic missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads.

And finally – there’s a mystery man, the fourth American prisoner who was released along with the others, but apparently stayed behind in Iran. How did they think the Americans were going to be released, if not a prisoner swap with Iranians convicted of violating sanctions? The agreement front-loaded almost all of the requirements for Tehran to disable and dismantle key nuclear activities that had put Iran in noncompliance with its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, slapped new sanctions on companies and individuals accused of supporting Iran’s ballistic missile program.

He didn’t specify, but the US has been a big military supporter of Israel and Iranian rivals Saudi Arabia and Iraq.