Zarif: Iran Will Return To Its Nuclear Program Faster Than Sanctions Can Be Re-Imposed

[Sally]

Sounds to me like they are planning on continuing their nuclear program. If not, why are they even thinking about sanctions in the future?

Zarif: Iran Will Return To Its Nuclear Program Faster Than Sanctions Can Be Re-Imposed
by TheTower.org Staff | 08.04.15 4:05 pm

The sanctions regime imposed on Iran for its illicit nuclear program has been destroyed and cannot easily be re-instituted, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Monday.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported:

“The structure of the sanctions that the US had built based on the UN Security Council’s resolutions was destroyed and like the 1990s when no other country complied with the US sanctions against Iran, no one will accept the return of the sanctions (in the future),” Zarif said on Monday, addressing a meeting at Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations which is being headed by former Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi.

He dismissed western officials’ remarks that the sanctions can be re-imposed against Iran in a short period of time, and said such a process needs several years while Tehran’s return to its past nuclear activities can be done in a shorter time if the world powers don’t remain committed to their undertakings.

Zarif’s observation that Iran could “return to its past nuclear activities” more quickly than sanctions could be re-imposed effectively echoes a veiled threat made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the end of June that if the West walked away from a deal, “we will go back to the old path, stronger than what they can imagine.”

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Zarif Iran Will Return To Its Nuclear Program Faster Than Sanctions Can Be Re-Imposed The Tower?

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - make `em make good before sanctions are lifted...

House Passes Bill Banning Sanctions Relief Until Iran Pays Damages to U.S. Terror Victims
October 2, 2015 – In the face of a White House veto threat, the House of Representatives passed legislation Thursday preventing President Obama from lifting any sanctions on Iran until Tehran pays damages, already ordered by U.S. courts, to American victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism.

“Until they pay these victims what they’re owed, let’s say no to Iran – not one cent,” Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) said before the House passed his Justice for Victims of Iranian Terrorism Act by a 251-173 vote. “We’re talking about Iranian-backed assassinations and bombings and attacks across the time zones – from Paris to Jerusalem to New York to Beirut to East Africa to Buenos Aires,” he said. “I say – not one cent.” “These victims are United States citizens – they’re wives, brothers and sisters, children who hail from all across the nation,” Meehan added. “And they were killed in hijackings and suicide attacks and bombings – of buses and planes and buildings and embassies‎ and shopping malls and pizza parlors.”

Rep. Patrick Meehan, R-Pa., speaks about his Justice for Victims of Iranian Terrorism Act on the House floor, alongside a photo of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, killed by Iranian-sponsored terrorists during a 1985 hijacking.​

Iran owes billions of dollars in court-awarded damages to the American victims of attacks ranging from the bombings of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983 and Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, to suicide bombings in Israel and the murder of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem during a 1985 hijacking. Damages worth more than $46 billion have been awarded, of which – according to the Congressional Research Service – some $43.5 billion remain unpaid, including $9 billion relating to the Marine Barracks bombing. The bill passed Thursday applies to court judgments delivered between March 2000 and May 2015. Under the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran is due receive around $100 billion as a result of sanctions relief in return for implementing steps which the administration says will prevent it from development a nuclear weapons capability.

The administration intentionally excluded non-nuclear issues – including terror-sponsorship and the fate of Americans imprisoned in Iran – from the JCPOA negotiations. “The Obama administration during its negotiations with Iran did not seek for Iran to compensate the families of those whose lives were taken by Iranian terrorism despite these U.S. court judgments,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.). “Iran will soon obtain $100 billion, approximately, in unfrozen assets, as well as immeasurable economic and financial benefits by escaping the sanctions regime and reintegrating in the global economy,” he said. “Iran will get sanctions lifted, and American victims will still be out in the cold. That’s not right, so this legislation addresses this injustice.”

‘False hope’