December 06-2013
The nuclear agreement between Iran and the Big Six, signed November 24, has not yet gone into effect and isn’t expected to go into effect until after the new year. As a result, there has not yet been any sanctions relief for Iran yet.
The biggest holdup appears to be in the European Union, which must make written changes to its sanctions rules that must be approved unanimously by all 28 foreign ministers.
They meet monthly with their next gathering on December 16. But some EU bureaucrats say all the required changes may not be ready to be put before the foreign ministers at that time and some work could lop over until the January meeting.
Furthermore, Iran must be part of such drafting and approve the new texts as complying with the four-page agreement negotiated last month.
A working level meeting of bureaucrats from all seven nations has been set for Vienna Dec. 8-9. It isn’t known how many more such meetings might be required to iron out all the details.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will also attend because a major part of the agreement requires more intense inspections by that agency. The IAEA will have to have everything in place before the agreement takes effect and the IAEA has already said it must hire more staff and will need a bigger budget to fulfill its part of the agreement.
The US part of the agreement does not require any action by Congress, but will involve a lot of amendments to existing sanctions regulations.
It remains to be seen how complex and how long the amendments will be. Some people are saying that if the amendments run to dozens of pages, it is likely that no one in the United States will make any changes in their practices since the amendments are only good for six months.
“It’s not worth the trouble to train your staff in how to ease up on sanctions if the changes won’t be around for long,” one analyst said. “You might just as well keep imposing the old and tougher rules for now.”
If the agreement doesn’t take effect until mid-January, then the six-month clock on the agreement will run until mid-June.