title: Kerry, Zarif to discuss U.S. sanctions relief for Iran on Friday: U.S.
text: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. sanctions relief will be on the agenda when the Iranian and U.S. foreign ministers meet on Friday amid Tehran’s complaints it has been slow to benefit from last year’s Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. State Department said. Under the July 14 nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to restrain its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions that had crippled its oil-dependent economy. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif plan to sit down in New York on Friday, their second meeting this week. “I fully expect that they will continue to talk about the sanctions relief process and the degree to which banks, foreign and domestic, as well as institutions, foreign and domestic, are evaluating their options under the JCPOA,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily briefing. Kirby said representatives of the U.S. Treasury Department, which oversees many but not all U.S. sanctions on Iran, would not take part in the meeting, and he played down expectations that the talks would yield any concrete proposals. In addition, Kirby told reporters Washington did not share Tehran’s view that a U.S. Supreme Court decision that almost $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks constituted “theft.” 