Dubai: Iran urged Barack Obama to block a law that would extend the US president’s authority to impose sanctions on the Islamic republic, calling it a violation of the Iranian nuclear deal.
On Thursday, the Senate voted 99-0 to extend the Iran Sanctions Act, which authorises a president to prevent investment in Iran’s energy sector and other sensitive industries. While Obama has waived most sanctions under the nuclear accord, congressional leaders said keeping them in reserve provides valuable leverage against Iran. White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the bill won’t interfere with the US-led nuclear agreement and he expected the president to sign it.
“If this law is implemented it will be a blatant violation of the Iran deal and it will lead to our resolute answer,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told parliament on Sunday.
The accord signed last year by Iran and six world powers, including the US, curbed Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international and European Union sanctions imposed over the work. While the agreement came into force on January, a number of other US restrictions related to Iran’s missile development and its links to US-designated terrorist groups remain in place.
The election of Donald Trump has reinvigorated Republican opposition to the accord, and last month the House of Representatives voted to block Boeing Co. from selling or leasing planes to Iran. The company agreed earlier this year to supply 109 aircraft to Iran in a deal worth as much $25 billion.
More than 260 members of Iran’s 290-seat parliament have called on Rouhani’s government to take unspecified reciprocal action against the US, Ahmad Amir-Abadi Farahani, a member of parliament’s presiding board said in a statement cited by the official Islamic republic News Agency.
