CAIRO REVIEW - Sunday, 24 January 2016
Hisham Melhem
Those of us wordsmiths writing, thinking , wondering and obsessing about things Middle Eastern have a new phrase to ponder; ‘Implementation day’. On January 16, 2016 you could hear many people saying: rejoice, the day we have been waiting for is upon us, while others denounced it as a day that shall live in infamy. After the International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA certified that Iran had delivered on its initial commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the United States and the P5+1 and the IAEA announced that the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran has begun on January 16, 2016. In return for Iran’s dismantlement of more than two-third of the centrifuges it once used to enrich uranium, shipping 98 percent of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia and rendering its heavy water reactor at Arak obsolete after removing its reactor and pouring concrete into it, ‘implementation day’ also triggered the suspension of a complex web of nuclear related sanctions the U.S. the European Union and the United Nations have imposed on Iran in recent years. The nuclear accord will allow Iran, inter alia, to retrieve at least $60 billion of its frozen assets and to return to the international oil market as a major producer. The nuclear deal is not open ended and does not eliminate Iran’s ability in the future to become a nuclear power, but if it is fully implemented it will severely restrict Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear device in the next 10 to 15 years.
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