After last week’s reports that after months of talks in Vienna between Iran and major powers to revive the nuclear pact a US-Iranian deal is finally taking shape, Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov said on Tuesday that they soon expect a prisoner swap between Iran and the United States.
Ulyanov noted that the talks on restoring a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program and ease sanctions are near the conclusion in Vienna and officials signaled an agreement was in sight.
Other diplomats pointed out that although only vaguely, the draft text of the agreement alludes to other issues such as unfreezing billions of dollars of Iranian funds in South Korean banks along with the release of Western prisoners held in Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian also confirmed on Saturday that Tehran is ready for an immediate prisoner exchange with the US.
Stressing that the talks about prisoners are not linked to the nuclear agreement but only associated with it, Amirabdollahian pointed out that this is a humanitarian measure Iran was ready to do months ago, but the Americans allegedly ruined the deal, without going into details.
Amirabdollahian believes at least five or six of the prisoners will be released, while US negotiator Robert Malley was more precise and has suggested that unless Tehran frees four US citizens that Washington says Tehran is holding hostage, there will be no deal.
Malley is talking about the Iranian American father and son Baquer Namazi, arrested 6 years ago, and his son Siamak, Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz, but also mentioned other unjustly imprisoned US and foreign nationals like British-Iranians Anousheh Ashouri and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Although Iran continuously denies it’s taking prisoners to gain diplomatic leverage despite refusing to recognize dual nationality, the elite IRGC has arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, in recent years mostly on espionage and security-related charges.
Iran, on the other hand, demands the release of more than a dozen Iranians in the US – 7 Iranian American dual nationals, two Iranians with permanent US residency, and 4 Iranian citizens with no legal status – jailed mostly for violating US sanctions against Iran.
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