Five Americans were imprisoned in Iran for years. They have now been released and have started their journey home via Qatar. In return, the US released five Iranian prisoners. Tehran should also be able to access frozen funds.
Five Americans held in Iran have been released. According to the Reuters news agency, US government representatives were able to meet the citizens at Doha airport in Qatar. A plane that had previously taken off from Tehran had brought them there.
Two relatives of the former prisoners were also on board. The five US citizens have Iranian roots and have both Iranian and US citizenship.
Iran gains access to six billion US dollars
In return, the United States pardoned five Iranians who were convicted or charged with “non-violent crimes.” One of them is accused of industrial espionage. According to the Iranian judiciary, two men were already on their way to their homeland, and another wanted to fly to a third country. Two Iranians want to stay in the USA.
Iran will also have access to around six billion US dollars from its own assets. The money was frozen in South Korea due to international sanctions.
Biden: “Years of torment and suffering”
The prisoner exchange had been prepared for months. According to the White House, Oman and Qatar played a particularly important role in the negotiations. At the beginning of August, Iran released the now released Americans from custody and placed them under house arrest in a hotel in the capital Tehran.
One of the most famous of them is businessman Siamak Namasi. He was imprisoned in 2015 and sentenced to ten years in prison for espionage. In 2018, environmentalist Morad Tahbas and businessman Emad Shargi were arrested. The identities of the other two Americans who have now been released have not yet been known.
The daughter of environmentalist Morad Tahbas demonstrated for his release with a photo of her father in her hands.
US President Joe Biden welcomed the release “after years of torment, uncertainty and suffering”. Five innocent Americans were finally coming home, he declared. Biden urged US citizens not to travel to Iran. He also demanded more information about the whereabouts of American citizen Bob Levinson, who disappeared in Iran years ago.
Release of funds for humanitarian purposes
The US government emphasized that the money to which Iran should now have access will be exchanged for euros in several tranches and transferred to Qatar. The money could only be used for humanitarian purposes, including medicine and food, it said. Such transactions are permitted under US sanctions against Iran.
The US side rejected representations from Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi that the money should flow into other areas, such as “domestic production”, which Raisi did not specify.
White House announces further sanctions
Relations between Iran and the US are historically bad. It is important that the exchange has not changed relations with Iran in any way, emphasized a US government representative. The country is an enemy and a terror-supporting state. The White House also announced that it would impose further sanctions against Iran – including against the Ministry of Intelligence and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Internationally, Iran is accused of putting people with Iranian and foreign passports in prison on flimsy charges in order to gain leverage in negotiations. Several Germans are also imprisoned in Iran.