Iran’s top diplomat claimed Sunday that a prisoner swap was near with the U.S., though he offered no evidence to support his assertion. The U.S. immediately dismissed his comments as a \u201ccruel lie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has made similar comments in the past about possible deals with the U.S. on frozen assets abroad and other issues that never came to fruition. Some of those remarks have appeared aimed at shoring up domestic support amid the mass protests challenging Iran’s theocracy and supporting the country’s troubled rial currency.<\/p>\n
However, in an interview Sunday with Iranian state television, Amirabdollahian claimed that Iran had \u201creached an agreement in recent days regarding the exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf everything goes well on the American\u2019s side, I think we will see the exchange of prisoners in the short term,\u201d he added. He alleged a document between Iran and the U.S. laying out the exchange had been \u201cindirectly signed and approved\u201d since March 2022.<\/p>\n
Reached by The Associated Press, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price called the comments \u201canother especially cruel lie that only adds to the suffering of their families.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working relentlessly to secure the release of the three wrongfully detained Americans in Iran,\u201d Price said. “We will not stop until they are reunited with their loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
A separate statement from the White House’s National Security Council also called the remarks \u201cfalse.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, Iranian officials will not hesitate to make things up, and the latest cruel claim will cause more heartache for the families of Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz,\u201d the council said.<\/p>\n
Iran long has taken prisoners with Western passports or ties to use in negotiations with foreign nations.<\/p>\n
As of right now, there are at least three American citizens known to be held in Iranian prisons on widely disputed espionage charges.<\/p>\n
The evidence against them has never been made public. The detainees all have dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship, something Tehran does not recognize.<\/p>\n
In recent days, however, longtime Iranian American detainee Siamak Namazi was allowed to conduct an interview with CNN from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison \u2014 something that would not have happened without the acquiescence of security forces.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ali Bagheri Kani, a deputy Iranian foreign minister who has handled nuclear talks with world powers, made a trip Sunday to Oman, a longtime interlocutor between Tehran and Washington.<\/p>\n
Amirabdollahian’s comments also come after Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Chinese mediation, announced Friday they would reestablish diplomatic ties and reopen embassies after a seven-year freeze in relations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran’s top diplomat claimed Sunday that a prisoner swap was near with the U.S., though he offered no evidence to support his assertion. The U.S. immediately dismissed his comments as a \u201ccruel lie.\u201d Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has made similar comments in the past about possible deals with the U.S. on frozen assets abroad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":6832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}