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by i24 News
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks at a news conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., U.S. February 28, 2022. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Iran’s top diplomat on Sunday said “everything is ready” to implement a stalled prisoner exchange deal with the United States, which Washington promptly denied as a “cruel lie.”
“Regarding the issue of prisoner swaps between Iran and the US we have reached an agreement in recent days, and if everything goes well on the U.S. side, I think we will witness a prisoner exchange in a short period,” said Hossein Amirabdollahian.
On our part, everything is ready, while the US is currently working on the final technical coordination,” he noted.
In response, US State Department spokesman Ned Price called Amirabdollahian’s claim “another especially cruel lie that only adds to the suffering of their (the prisoners’) families.”
“We are working relentlessly to secure the release of the three wrongfully detained Americans in Iran,” Price added.
Siamak Namazi, a businessman with dual US-Iranian citizenship, is one of the several Americans held in Iran after he was sentenced in 2016 to 10 years in prison for spying and cooperating with the US government. Along with Namazi are Iranian-American businessman Emad Sharghi, jailed in 2018 when he was working for a tech investment company, and Iranian-American environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, who also holds British citizenship.
Iranian sources told Reuters that two regional countries were involved in the series of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington for the swap deal.
Iran has for years sought the release of more than a dozen Iranian prisoners in the United States, including seven Iranian-American dual nationals, two Iranians with permanent US residency, and four Iranian nationals with no legal status.
Last week, Tehran also expressed its readiness for a long-awaited prisoner swap with Belgium, days after the European country’s Constitutional Court gave the green light for such a move. The exchange would see Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele – jailed in Iran for 40 years for several charges including spying – swapped for Iranian official Assadollah Assadi, who was convicted in Belgium for masterminding a plot to blow up a 2018 opposition event outside Paris.
