President Biden reportedly secured a $6 billion deal to free Americans in exchange for jailed Iranians.
The New York Times first reported about the prisoner swap agreement Thursday. Once five Americans imprisoned in Iran are allowed to return to the United States, the Biden administration is said to have agreed to release a handful of Iranian nationals serving prison sentences for violating sanctions on Iran.
Sources told the Times the United States also agreed to unfreeze nearly $6 billion of Iran’s assets in South Korea, transferring the funds into an account in the central bank of Qatar.
The American prisoners include Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz, who the U.S. government says were all wrongfully detained on bogus spying charges. The names of the other two were being withheld by their families, but one is said to be a scientist, the other a businessman.
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According to the Times, Namazi, Sharghi, Tahbaz and a fourth American were transferred from the notorious Evin Prison to a hotel in the Iranian capital of Tehran, where they will be detained for another few weeks before being allowed to board a plane.
U.S.-based lawyer Jared Genser acknowledged the move.
“The move by Iran of the American hostages from Evin Prison to an expected house arrest is an important development,” Genser said in a statement to the Associated Press. “While I hope this will be the first step to their ultimate release, this is at best the beginning of the end and nothing more. But there are simply no guarantees about what happens from here.”
Sharghi’s sister, Neda Sharghi, also acknowledged the transfer.
“My family has faith in the work that President Biden and government officials have undertaken to bring our families home and hope to receive that news soon,” she said in a statement to the AP. “Until that point, I hope you can understand that we do not think it will be helpful to comment further.”
The fifth person, an American woman with dual Iranian citizenship, is said to already have been released on house arrest earlier this year, the Times reported.
The prisoner swap agreement, mediated by Oman, Qatar and Switzerland, is to be carried out over a series of coordinated steps. The three released prisoners cited by Genser whose identities are known are Namazi, who was detained in 2015 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison on internationally criticized spying charges; Shargi, a venture capitalist sentenced to 10 years in prison; and Tahbaz, a British-American conservationist of Iranian descent who was arrested in 2018 and also received a 10-year sentence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
