The US and five other world powers struck a temporary, but historic agreement with Iran Saturday night, under which the Islamic republic would halt much of its nuclear program in exchange for limited relief from crippling sanctions.
“Simply put, they cut off Iran’s most likely paths to a bomb,” President Obama said of the elements of the accord, which comes after decades of strained ties between Washington and Tehran going back to 1979, when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared the US to be the “Great Satan.”
Obama pitched the pact as tough on Iran, stressing that the relief from sanctions would be “modest.”
Some $100 billion in Iranian assets is currently frozen. Saturday’s accord will unfreeze less than $7 billion of those funds.
Core sanctions on oil exports and financial transactions — the most severe penalties — remain in place until a final, and more comprehensive deal is achieved as negotiations continue over the next six months.
“The broader architecture of sanctions will remain in place and we will enforce them vigorously,” Obama told the nation in a live broadcast.
“The burden is on Iran to prove to the world that its nuclear program will be exclusively for peaceful purposes,” Obama said.
Still, the accord promises no new sanctions for the next half-year, and it allows Iran to continue much of its non-weapons-grade nuclear fuel enrichment.
Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz — the cabinet official responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear program — criticized the international deal, saying it is based on Iran’s “deception and self-delusion.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted in Israel’s Ynetnews.com on Saturday telling local media in Moscow that the deal gives Iran “an unbelievable Christmas present — the capacity to maintain this [nuclear] breakout capability for practically no concessions at all.”
On Friday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani had called on the West to ignore Israel’s warnings.
“Israel is only concerned about its own interests, and it does not think about the interests of the world,” he said.
Reaction in the US largely split along party lines, with some Democrats, including Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, calling the deal a welcome step in the right direction.
Secretary of State John Kerry sat at the negotiating table and was the first Democrat to weigh in on the results, announcing the accord with the tweet: “Agreement in Geneva: first step makes world safer. More work now.”
But some Republicans expressed outrage.
“By allowing the Iranian regime to retain a sizable nuclear infrastructure, this agreement makes a nuclear Iran more likely,” complained Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Sen. Mark Kirk, (R-Ill), said the deal “appears to provide the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism with billions of dollars in exchange for cosmetic concessions.”