It’s been coming for awhile, but according to Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran is just “days” away from a final implementation of all of its obligations under the P5+1 nuclear deal, setting the stage for sanctions relief under the pact’s terms.
Once Iran is done, it will just be a question of how quickly the IAEA can verify the implementation, which itself is likely only to take a matter of days. After that, the US and others are obliged to follow through on the sanctions relief, and unfreezing Iranian assets.
Iran was initially not expected to implement everything until spring, and early on US officials were expressing annoyance that Iran was complying “too fast.” The Rouhani government wants to get sanctions relief in place ahead of next month’s elections.
US compliance with the deal will, as always, be facing harsh objections from Congress, which is hoping to impose more sanctions on Iran over a ballistic missile test, which would attempt to duplicate a lot of the sanctions being removed under a different pretext.
Oh crap! Now we are going to give them their $125 B back. We have to think of something …and fast!
Now you know why Saudis suck up to USA demands–$billions in treasury bills.
As always at the moment, the centre of all this is Putin. Rapid implementation of the deal means that Iranian oil can start flowing to the EU, thereby breaking Putin's stranglehold and further weakening his position. Since Gulf oil is traditionally shipped to Europe by supertanker, the infrastructure is already in place at both ends and the ships are available. Various attempts to hype Iran into Putin's "ally" notwithstanding, the Iranians very obviously want to steal Putin's oil markets whlle he's still under sanctions.