Iran Claims Alleged American Prisoners’ Release May Take Months

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 Foreign Ministry also indicated the $6 billion in unfrozen assets from South Korean banks might not be enough, ominously musing that Iran has assets frozen in Iraq as well.

“The agreements were signed with an expectation that they will be implemented within two months. We view the prospects for their implementation on time with optimism, because, according to the information we have, the work in this direction is proceeding well,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Monday.

Kanaani claimed the “handover process” for Iranian assets in Iraq has begun, and “some of them have already been moved out of Iraq.” He offered no further details.

The Biden administration has also been remarkably tight-lipped about the hostage deal. No formal announcement has been made to date — everything the American people know about the arrangement was leaked anonymously to news networks in an orchestrated backdoor media rollout on August 10.

Under the terms of the deal as fed to reporters by anonymous “sources,” Iran would release five U.S. citizens held under bogus “espionage” charges in exchange for gaining access to $6 billion in assets frozen in South Korean banks after former President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. The longest-held of these hostages, Siamak Namazi, was arrested in October 2015.

The administration publicly applauded Iran for moving four of the five hostages from Tehran’s hideous Evin Prison into house arrest and gave assurances Iran would only be able to use the unfrozen funds for food and medicine purchases but has made few other public comments about the deal. 

The fact that Iran can spend the $6 billion it suddenly does not have to earmark for food and medicine on other projects dear to its extremist theocratic regime — such as funding Shiite insurgent militias in neighboring countries like Iraq — is a topic the Biden White House and its apologists prefer not to discuss.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s statement last week that the unfrozen funds would be used to “enhance domestic production,” not purchase humanitarian goods, has likewise gone undiscussed.

Administration sources said on August 10 they expected it would take several weeks for Iran to release its prisoners, but Kanaani’s time frame of up to two months is somewhat longer than anticipated. 

South Korean media reported on Monday that Iran’s assets have already been transferred to the central bank of Switzerland, from which they will be disbursed to Iran. The report said the Swiss National Bank plans to convert South Korean won to dollars and euros at the rate of about 4225 million a day for the next five weeks, which is suspiciously close to the time frame the Iranian Foreign Ministry gave for releasing the imprisoned Americans.