On 16 January 2016 the EU and United States lifted most sanctions against Iran. Implementation Day was the culmination of lengthy diplomatic efforts to produce a credible solution to Iran’s nuclear issue, and represented a shift in Western relations with Iran.

​It also represented fresh opportunities for businesses to take advantage of the partial opening of Iranian borders. However, with notable old sanctions maintained, various new sanctions in place, and the risk of money laundering and the financing of terrorism still high, it continues to be important to take a cautious approach when conducting business activities with Iran.

It was on 14 July 2015 that the P5+1 (United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany) and Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement. Once the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified that Iran had implemented its nuclear-related commitments, necessary steps were taken to lift the sanctions, which included, among others, financial and banking-related sanctions, certain energy sanctions, and sanctions against entities and individuals.

Yet, a number of sanctions have been kept in place, as well as new sanctions added. Notably, the trade of certain metals and software is still prohibited, there is still an arms embargo, and over 200 individuals and entities remain or have been added to the United States’ Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN List), prohibiting significant transactions with them. Licences for certain transactions can be obtained, but are granted on a case-by-case basis. These sanctions will remain in place until 2023, or until the UN Security Council receives a report from the IAEA stating that all nuclear material in Iran remains in peaceful activities.

Amidst the bombs and bloodshed of Baghdad, these orphans have found a haven.

Their days are filled with art, music and painting — a way to cope with the chaos around them through creativity.

"It is better for me to stay in this house instead of living on the street," 16-year-old Zain al-Abideen Abdulhadi told NBC News during a recent visit. "I have learned how to play music and paint."

Abdulhadi's house is the Iraqi Safe House for Creativity, a private, non-government funded orphanage. He lives there with 32 other boys and teens.

Thousands of Iraqi refugees who arrived in Finland last year have decided to cancel their asylum applications and to return home voluntarily, citing family issues and disappointment with life in the frosty Nordic country.

Europe is in the grip of its worst migrant crisis since World War Two, with more than a million people arriving last year, fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and beyond.

Germany and Finland's neighbor Sweden have taken in many of the migrants but Finland too saw the number of asylum seekers increase nearly tenfold in 2015 to 32,500 from 3,600 in 2014.

​Almost two thirds of the asylum seekers last year were young Iraqi men, but some are now having second thoughts, so Finland will begin chartering flights to Baghdad from next week to take them home.

The Iraqi army, police and Iranian-backed militias have together imposed a near total siege on Fallujah since late last year

Baghdad: A senior Iraqi official has appealed to the US-led coalition to air-drop food and medicine to tens of thousands of civilians trapped in Fallujah, the Daesh stronghold under siege by security forces.

The city’s population is suffering from a shortage of food, medicine and fuel, according to residents reached by phone, and local media said several people had died due to starvation and insufficient medical care. Insecurity and poor communications inside the city make those reports difficult to verify.

Sohaib Al Rawi, the governor of western Anbar province where Fallujah is located, said an air-drop was the only way to deliver humanitarian supplies to residents after Daesh mined the entrances to the city and prevented civilians from leaving.
“No force can enter and secure (the delivery)... There is no option but for airplanes to transport aid,” he said in an interview to Al Hadath TV late on Monday, adding the situation was deteriorating by the day.

Robin Yassin-Kassab rebuts the claim that Iran is a protector of Shia Arabs, arguing that the Islamic Republic sees them as little more than fodder to advance its interests.

I recently gave a talk in a radical bookshop in Scotland. The talk was about my and Leila al-Shami’s “Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War”, a book which aims to amplify grassroots Syrian revolutionary voices and perspectives. My talk was of course critical of the Iranian and Russian interventions to rescue the Assad regime.

During the question and answer session afterwards, a young man declared: “You’ve spoken against Iran. You’ve made a good case. But the fact remains, Iran is the protector of Shia Muslims throughout the region.”

In reply I asked him to consider the Syrian town of al-Qusayr at two different moments: Summer 2006 and summer 2013.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says Iraq is ready to retake the city of Mosul from "Islamic State" militants. He wants to fight terrorism, corruption and the Sunni-Shiite rift. But can he deliver on this promise?

​Militants from the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) have been in control of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq since June 2014. But Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told DW in an exclusive interview that this is about to change.

"We are ready. We started deploying forces in east Mosul last week. Our process is ongoing. We are on plan now to start the operation for Mosul."

After recapturing the cities of Tikrit and Ramadi last year, al-Abadi said he feels confident that Iraqi security forces can also retake Iraq's second largest city Mosul from IS.

BAGHDAD — It was once a well-kept memorial for hundreds of Iraqi civilians who were killed by American bombs while they slept, a powerful symbol of suffering embraced by a dictator’s propaganda machine.

The destruction of the Amiriya bomb shelter, in a middle-class Baghdad neighborhood, on Feb. 13, 1991, at the outset of the Persian Gulf war, killed some 408 civilians in the worst way possible: Most were burned alive. It stands as the deadliest episode of civilian casualties in the painful history, now a quarter-century long, of the United States in Iraq.

For years, Saddam Hussein ensured that the event remained etched in the Iraqi collective memory, recalled in movies, songs, poems and ceremonies. The shelter was a required stop for visiting dignitaries and foreign correspondents in Mr. Hussein’s tightly controlled Iraq.

This week, 25 years later, the anniversary passed with almost no notice. An Iraqi Army unit now occupies the grounds of the shelter. The site is no longer open to the public, although the occasional survivors or family members of the dead are welcomed by soldiers and given tours.

Iraq’s economy is in a tailspin. Falling oil prices are depriving the country of much needed revenue. At the same time costs are up with the war and the hundreds of thousands of displaced. That’s leading to skyrocketing unemployment and an increase in poverty.

At the end of January 2016 a parliamentary committee said that the jobless rate had hit a new level. The committee announced that unemployment could be as high as 40%. It blamed the economic crisis caused by the drop in oil revenues and the war with the Islamic State.

Many of those out of work were the displaced from Ninewa, Salahaddin and Anbar, which have been most affected by the fighting. Iraq is one of the most oil dependent countries in the world with around 90% of its money coming from the sale of petroleum. That mostly goes to the government sector, which is the largest employer. Now the country’s revenues are down 45%, and it has to pay for the war and its effects.

News of Iraq’s faltering economy has been growing over the last two years. In May 2014 there were signs that the country was heading into a recession. Things like the real estate and car markets were slowing, projects were being put on hold because the budget was not passed, and unemployment was already going up.

BAGHDAD -- If breached, it could unleash a 180-foot-high wave down the Tigris River Basin and drown more than half a million people, with floodwaters reaching as far as the Iraqi capital, about 280 miles to the south.

The collapse of the Mosul Dam would be catastrophic for Iraq. The dam has been called the most dangerous in the world for the past decade. But recent assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers say it is at a “significantly higher risk” of failing than previously thought.

The dam’s structural problems became evident as soon as the reservoir behind it was filled in 1985. It is built on layers of clay and gypsum, a soft mineral that dissolves when it comes into contact with water, and the dam immediately began seeping. Since then, about 100,000 tons of grout have been poured into the structure to prevent it from collapsing.

But even this stopgap measure has been disrupted by the Islamic State, which briefly seized the dam in the summer of 2014. The militants still hold the nearby city of Mosul, their de facto capital in Iraq. Political wrangling and a financial crisis in Iraq also are complicating repair work.