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Barack Obama extends Carter-era sanctions on Iran

13 November 2013 09:24 (UTC +04:00)

Declaring that “relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal,” Obama announced that he had “determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12170 with respect to Iran.” The order freezing all Iranian assets in the United States has been in place since President Jimmy Carter signed it on November 4, 1979 – the day Iranian protesters took over US embassy in Tehran.

In recent years the US has slapped stringent sanctions on Iran under the pretext that the country's nuclear program might have a covert drive towards acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, a charge denied by Iran. Iran has been hit with dozens of sanctions in the last ten years. Some of them are based on UN Security Council resolutions, others are decisions by the European Union, others are acts of the US Congress and still others are executive orders by the US president.