Iranian President Hassan Rouhani awarded the nuclear negotiating team on Monday with medals of honour for clinching an historic deal with world powers in July 2015.He awarded the first class medals of "Merit" and "Courage" to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Head of Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi and Defence Minister Hossein Dehqan, XInhua reported."Today is the day to express gratitude to the devoted chiefs who defended the (rights of) nation in the international arena," Rouhani said in the awarding ceremony.The deal, reached on July 14, 2015 between Iran and five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, or P5+1, ended a decade-long dispute over Tehran's controversial nuclear programme.The agreement resulted in the lifting of international and Western nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions on Iran in exchange for wide-scale limitation on the country's nuclear activities for specific period of time.