Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25
By Umid Niayesh, Saeed Isayev - Trend: Iran's nuclear deal with the P5+1 group will prevent worsening of country's current economic situations, but won't help to improve it, expert on nuclear issues, Reza Taghizadeh told Trend.
Iran and six world powers reached a breakthrough deal early on Sunday on Tehran's nuclear program. The two sides have signed a joint "plan of action". The deal signed in Geneva suggests some softening on sanctions against Iran.
"According to the agreement P5+1 will not impose additional sanctions against Iran during the next six months and would suspend only some portion of existing sanctions," Tahgizadeh explained.
He said that the deal only includes the current situation with Iran's nuclear activities, and despite the claims from Iran's negotiating team, uranium enrichment right was not mentioned in the agreement.
"Iran has accepted the conditions put forward by the Western countries," Taghizadeh said. "By doing so, Iran has returned 10 years back, when the Saad Abad deal was signed in Tehran."
During Saad Abad negotiations in October 2003, Iran implemented the additional protocol of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and suspended voluntarily gas injection to centrifuges in Natanz site as a confidence building measure; it opened its nuclear sites to the IAEA inspectors. Germany was committed to block refereeing of Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN; Britain and France accepted to veto the resolution by the UN if the dossier referred to the Security Council.
Speaking of Iran's blocked assets in other countries, Taghizadeh noted that only 10 percent of those assets can be released, according to the deal.
"Due to Iranian administration's vital needs for foreign currency, these released assets will not directly affect ordinary people in Iran," Taghizadeh underscored. "The economic conditions of ordinary Iranians will remain the same, they're not going to get better with released portion of the assets."
Taghizadeh went on to say that Iran's foreign currency revenues will not increase during the period for which the agreement has been signed, which is six months.
There is no concrete figure about the amount of Iran's frozen assets abroad. Iran's former Deputy Commerce Minister for Economic Affairs, Hamid Safdel said in February that $100 billion worth of Iran's assets have been blocked overseas.
Head of the Majlis Research Centre (MRC) Kazem Jalali said on August 2 that some $60 billion worth of Iranian assets were blocked by foreign banks.
In turn, AP reported on Oct. 18 that Iran's assets are estimated to be between $50 billion to $75 billion.
Taghizadeh went on to say that the EU will continue to overlook oil imports from Iran, adding that the countries which have decreased oil imports from Iran will keep the import level at the current limited amount.
The U.S. and its Western allies suspect Iran of developing a nuclear weapon - something that Iran denies. The Islamic Republic has on numerous occasions stated that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons, using nuclear energy for medical researches instead.