It’s been coming for awhile, but according to Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran is just “days” away from a final implementation of all of its obligations under the P5+1 nuclear deal, setting the stage for sanctions relief under the pact’s terms.
Once Iran is done, it will just be a question of how quickly the IAEA can verify the implementation, which itself is likely only to take a matter of days. After that, the US and others are obliged to follow through on the sanctions relief, and unfreezing Iranian assets.
Iran was initially not expected to implement everything until spring, and early on US officials were expressing annoyance that Iran was complying “too fast.” The Rouhani government wants to get sanctions relief in place ahead of next month’s elections.
US compliance with the deal will, as always, be facing harsh objections from Congress, which is hoping to impose more sanctions on Iran over a ballistic missile test, which would attempt to duplicate a lot of the sanctions being removed under a different pretext.
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