Great Satan US to pay Iran $1.7bn in debt, interest

US Secretary of State John Kerry says that Washington is slated to repay Iran a $400 million debt, along with an additional $1.3 billion in interest.

Kerry made the announcement on Sunday, adding that the payments date back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, according to the AFP.

The news comes only a day after President Barack Obama signed an executive order, lifting US economic sanctions on Iran.

The repayment, arranged after an international legal tribunal, is separate from the tens of billions of dollars in frozen assets that Tehran can now access.

Iran and the P5+1 – the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany – finalized the text of the JCPOA in Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 2015.

Under the agreement, limits are put on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for, among other things, the removal of all nuclear-related economic and financial bans against the Islamic Republic.