Still have to ‘carefully watch’ Iran: Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has said she is “very proud” of the Iranian nuclear agreement and its compliance by Tehran even though she thinks there is still need to “carefully watch” Iran. “I’m very proud of the Iran nuclear agreement. I was very pleased to be part of what the president put into action when he took office. I was responsible for getting those sanctions imposed which put the pressure on Iran. It brought them to the negotiating table which resulted in this agreement,” Clinton said during a Democratic party’s presidential debate. 

“And so, they have been so far, following their requirements under the agreement. But I think we still have to carefully watch them. We’ve had one good day over 36 years and I think we need more good days before we move more rapidly toward any kind of normalisation,” Clinton said. 

“We have to be sure that they are truly going to implement the agreement. We have to go after them on a lot of their other bad behaviour in the region which is causing enormous problems in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere,” she said. 

Iran on Monday denounced “illegitimate” new sanctions by the United States on its ballistic missile programme, days after Tehran’s historic nuclear deal with world powers was confirmed. “Iran’s missile programme has never been designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons,” foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said. He added that Tehran saw fresh economic sanctions as “illegitimate”. 

The United States announced new penalties on Sunday related to Iran’s ballistic missile programme after the lifting of punishing measures aimed at its atomic activities as the deal with world powers was confirmed in Vienna. 

Five Iranian nationals and a network of companies based in the United Arab Emirates and China were added to an American blacklist, the US Treasury said. “As previously announced, Iran responds with determination to such propaganda by accelerating its legal ballistic missile programme and boosting defence capabilities,” Ansari said.