Tehran skyline. Photo: Hamed Saber.

US companies other than food, aircraft parts and medicine suppliers are still banned from conducting direct transactions with Iran. But last week Maryland senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing that sanctions relief on Tehran could start next month, when an agreement with world powers over Iran’s controversial nuclear program was implemented.

On the nuclear agreement’s “implementation day”, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control would issue a general licence authorising foreign-based arms of US corporations to engage in activities involving Iran, a US official said.

Read full story at The Australian.