Kerry, Zarif prepare to reconvene on Iran’s sanction complaints

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet in New York on Friday with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, as Tehran complains that Washington has not lived up to its nuclear deal obligations.

Kerry’s spokesman told reporters in Washington that the two top diplomatic chiefs will hold another day of talks following a meeting at the UN on Tuesday.

Tehran has said it is not receiving enough sanctions relief.

“In these discussions with Foreign Minister Zarif tomorrow, I fully expect that they will continue to talk about the sanctions relief process, and the degree to which banks, foreign and domestic, as well as institutions foreign and domestic are evaluating their options under the JCPOA,” State Department John Kirby said Thursday, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as the international nuclear deal is also known.

The two men will address “the degree to which they have before them a sufficient level of understanding to make decisions with respect to sanctions relief,” Kirby said at the State Department’s daily briefing.

This week’s meetings mark the first face-to-face encounters between Kerry and Zarif since January, when they met in Vienna to formally implement the nuclear deal.

Iranian officials have complained that the United States has not lived up to its side of the nuclear agreement because Western banks and corporations have been reluctant to renew business ties.

Kirby said nothing could be further from the truth.

“We certainly are not trying to become an obstacle in any way of foreign banks and institutions working with Iran through the sanctions relief process and doing legitimate business with Iran,” he said.

He added: “We believe we are working hard to try to explain what the obligations are, what the responsibilities are and what the opportunities are for foreign institutions and banks under the JCPOA.”

Washington, for its part, has also pointed the finger at Tehran, warning that it retains the right to impose new sanctions over Iran’s ballistic missile tests.

On Tuesday Kerry and Zarif reported some progress on the Iranian complaints.

Iran says it is locked out of the international financial system and that the US isn’t fulfilling its obligations under the agreement. The White House, Treasury and the State Department have all said the US has done what is required, but US officials say the Obama administration is considering easing or formally clarifying financial restrictions that prevent US dollars from being used in transactions that enable business with Iran.

The officials have ruled out granting Iran access to the US financial system or direct access to the dollar, but they have left the door open to other steps to encourage trade that is now legal under the nuclear deal.

Kerry told reporters that he and Zarif are working to make sure the nuclear agreement “is implemented in exactly the way that it is meant to be, and that all the parties … get the benefits that they are supposed to get out of the agreement.”

“We worked on a number of key things today. We made some progress on it,” Kerry said. “We agreed to meet on Friday … to sort of solidify what we talked about today.”

Zarif said they focused on how to implement the deal “to make sure that we will draw the benefits that Iran is entitled to.”

Both Kerry and Zarif will be at UN headquarters on Friday for a ceremony attended by more than 130 world leaders and ministers who will be signing the historic climate change agreement reached in Paris in December.

In a speech Monday night, Kerry defended the nuclear agreement, in which Iran curbed its atomic program in exchange for sanctions relief, to the pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy group J Street that supports the deal. But his comments may have put a price tag on Iran’s anger over sanctions relief.

“Despite the skeptics’ most dire predictions, we are in a place that some people thought was unimaginable and others unacceptable,” Kerry said.

Kerry said some presidential candidates said the amount of money Iran would get under the deal was $155 billion, which was a mistake, and others thought it would be about $100 billion.

“We calculated it to be about $55 billion, when you really take a hard look at the economy and what is happening,” Kerry said. “Guess what, folks? You know how much they have received to date as I stand here tonight? About $3 billion. So what we said to people was true.”