Both the U.S. and Iranian governments will take the first steps on Sunday to implement the nuclear deal reached earlier this year, though sanctions will still remain in effect until officials certify Iran has held up its end of the deal to stop its march toward producing a nuclear weapon.
The so-called “adoption day,” or 90 days from when the United Nations Security Council passed the resolution, marks the day the U.S. will issue waivers to lift sanctions once the Iranians prove they have disabled their nuclear weapons facilities, a process which could take months, according to senior officials at the State Department.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2574118/
President Obama said Sunday that he had directed government officials to begin preparations to lift sanctions, though the sanctions will not actually be moved until Iran fulfills its commitments under the deal.
“I welcome this important step forward, and we, together with our partners, must now focus on the critical work of fully implementing this comprehensive resolution that addresses our concerns over Iran’s nuclear program,” Obama said in a statement.
Now that the deal is adopted, the signers of the deal will meet for the first time on Monday in Vienna for about three hours to talk about initial steps and form some subgroups mandated by the deal, a senior administration official said Saturday.
Iran can also begin on that day to close down its centrifuges and its heavy water research reactor in Arak.
Once inspectors certify that Iran has adequately closed down its nuclear production facilities, some sanctions from the U.S. and other countries will be lifted, opening up the possibility for companies around the world to do business with Iran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is eager to comply with the deal quickly to get sanctions lifted before his February election, Politico reported. Rouhani has said Iran could complete its part of the deal and see sanctions disappear as soon as one to two months from now, a timeline analysts say is not realistic. Their estimate is closer to six months, according to the Politico article.
A senior administration official said the U.S. would be “delighted” if Iran is able to implement the deal as quickly as they hope, as long as all the conditions of the deal are met.
“Whether that takes two months, three months, four months, or beyond is really up to the Iranians, so we also are going to be in a bit of wait and see mode. For us it’s important that it’s done right, not that it’s done quickly,” the official said.
Sanctions leveraged against Iran for its support of terrorism and human rights violations will continue, according to a White House fact sheet.
As the two countries begin to implement the deal, Secretary of State John Kerry said it’s important for the U.S. and its partners to remain vigilant and work together.
“The Middle East remains a deeply troubled place but every problem in the region would be made much worse if Iran had or was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon. The Iran agreement is the best way to ensure that this possibility is foreclosed now and for all time,” Kerry wrote in an op-ed Saturday on Medium.
If there are any conflicts in the region as Iran begins to implement the deal, the U.S. may be caught short-handed. The carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt left the region earlier this week, meaning that the U.S. will not have a months-long gap with no aircraft carrier in the Middle East, The Hill reported.
Earlier this week, Iran tested a new long-range ballistic missile in an action that violates U.N. resolutions, but does not violate the nuclear deal. The missile, named “Emad,” or Pillar, has a claimed range of about 1,000 miles.
The U.S. is raising the test as an issue with the U.N., but is still operating under the assumption that Iran will abide by its commitments under the nuclear deal.
“In contrast to the repeated violations of the U.N. Security Council resolution that pertains to their ballistic missile activities, we’ve seen that Iran over the last couple of years has demonstrated a track record of abiding by the commitments that they made in the context of the nuclear talks,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
Many Republicans in Congress disapprove of the nuclear deal, saying that it does not go far enough to stop nuclear proliferation or allow for outside verification that Iran, who many say can not be trusted, is sticking to its end of the deal.
The House passed a bill earlier this month that would prohibit President Obama from lifting the sanctions, just one of several initiatives on Capitol Hill designed to stop the deal. All, ultimately, failed to stop the deal from going into effect.
Some Democrats in Congress sided with Republicans in their criticism of the deal, but others said that the compromise is the best pathway right now to block Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
“This agreement will substantially constrain the Iranian nuclear program for its duration, and compared with all realistic alternatives, it is the best option available to us at this time,” Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., said in a lengthy statement earlier this year explaining his vote supporting the deal.
