The United States and Iran exchanged prisoners on Monday, largely completing a deal that also included President Joe Biden unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian assets that have been held in South Korean banks since former President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Monday it could take up to two months to complete the “process” of releasing five American hostages after President Joe Biden’s reported $6 billion ransom payment.
The Biden administration on Thursday struck a deal with Iran to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian financial assets, and release a “handful” of Iranian nationals jailed for violating U.S. sanctions, in exchange for five Americans who were taken prisoner by Iran on highly dubious charges of espionage.
U.S. Navy veteran Michael White, imprisoned by the Iranian regime for over a year, was granted humanitarian parole on Thursday due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Iranian government on Tuesday ordered the temporary release of more than 54,000 prisoners, representing about 20 percent of its imprisoned population, to slow the spread of the coronavirus in its notoriously overcrowded and unsanitary jails. The released detainees include some of the regime’s political prisoners, possibly including British-Iranian dual citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who apparently did contract the virus during her stint at Iran’s horrifying Evin prison.
Iran indicated Monday it wants to swap more prisoners with the United States following the release of Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani, traded for Chinese-American scholar Xiyue Wang, a graduate student at Princeton.
In a statement released on Friday, the White House said it was “prepared to impose new and serious consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens are released and returned.”
An Iranian court has sentenced Golamreza “Robin” Shahini, a dual American-Iranian citizen from San Diego, to 18 years in prison for allegedly “collaborating with a foreign government” and for Facebook posts.
Iran’s state-controlled media are talking up the possibility of extorting “many billions of dollars” in further ransom payments from the United States, and they have been stocking up on American hostages to get the money.
Iran’s penchant for indicting foreign prisoners on unspecified charges continues, as Iranian news agencies announced the indictment of three dual nationals, including one American, Monday.
Eighty-year-old Baquer Namazi was arrested on Monday in Tehran and will be taken to the notorious Evin Prison, where his son Siamak Namazi is already being held without charges. Both Namazis hold dual American and Iranian citizenship.
On November 4, 1979, Muslim student revolutionaries in the Islamic Republic of Iran took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and with it claimed 52 American citizens as hostages in what became a 444-day ordeal that would go on to grip America and the world.
Iran has taken another American citizen captive. On Tuesday, Iran’s state-owned IRIB news network announced that the regime had arrested Nizar Ahmad Zakka, a Lebanese-American from Riverside, California with alleged “deep ties” to the U.S. military and intelligence services on suspicion of espionage.
Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American citizen who helped establish a pro-Tehran lobbying group in America, has been arrested in Iran and imprisoned indefinitely.
