Zarif touts swift sanctions relief
Iran's foreign minister told a New York audience that after a nuclear agreement is reached, sanctions could be lifted within weeks.
NEW YORK — Iran’s foreign minister laid out a course of action this week in the case of an anticipated nuclear deal with six world powers, including a UN Security Council endorsement “within days” and the lifting of sanctions “within weeks” of an agreement, but diplomats say that the process is not that simple.
“As our understanding stands today, and I don’t think there is any divergence here, if we have an agreement on June 30, on or within a few days after that, we will have a resolution in the Security Council under Article 41 of Chapter 7, which will be mandatory for all member states,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told a public audience at New York University on April 29.
“The resolution will endorse the agreement, will terminate all previous resolutions and will set in place the termination of EU sanctions and the cessation of the application of US sanctions,” he said. “These are steps that should only take a few weeks. Sanctions are off.”
But a Western diplomat with knowledge of the negotiations said that the process is not as straightforward as Zarif suggested.
