Iran Signals US Prisoner Swap Could Be Close

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Iran believes everything is ready for an exchange.

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s foreign minister has signaled that a prisoner swap with the United States could come soon after an initial deal is reached on the long-standing issue.

“We reached an agreement in the last few days and if everything goes well on the American side, I think we will witness a prisoner exchange in the short term,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an interview with state television on Sunday.

“An agreement was signed between us and the US side during proxy talks in March last year, but now the foundations for implementing it have been prepared. In our point of view, everything is ready. The US side is committed to its own final technical coordination.”

The senior diplomat’s comments come as his deputy, Ali Bagheri Kani, who is also the country’s top nuclear negotiator, traveled to Oman, which acted as a mediator between Tehran and Washington in the prisoner swap talks.

In October, 85-year-old Iranian-American Baquer Namazi left Iran. aboard a Royal Omani Air Force jet after Tehran decided to release him due to health problems.

His son, Siamak Namazi, is one of three known US prisoners left behind bars in Iran, where all have been arrested on espionage charges.

Earlier this week, Namazi had an interview with the American outlet CNN from inside Evin prison in Tehran, and directly implored US President Joe Biden to secure his release, along with businessman Emad Sharghi, 58, and environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, 67, who is also a British national.

“I remain deeply concerned that the White House is not realizing how dire our situation has become,” he said.

Namazi, who has been jailed for more than seven years, had written a similar letter to Biden and went on hunger strike for a week in January to request a prisoner swap deal.

Neither side has confirmed the details of a potential deal, but it is believed that in addition to the release of an unknown number of Iranian prisoners in the US, there could also be the release of $7 billion in Iranian dollars frozen by South Korea due to the US sanctions

The swap deal had previously been linked to now-stalled talks to restore Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, a pact Washington unilaterally abandoned in 2018.

Iran has repeatedly blamed the US for a delay in both the prisoner exchange and nuclear deal talks, something Washington has rejected.

Amir-Abdollahian said on Sunday that Iran believes an agreement on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the nuclear deal is formally known, is “within reach”, but Tehran wants to ongoing issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) determined as a “red line” that it will not cross.

The United States has maintained that nuclear talks are not currently a priority as it accuses Tehran of supplying Russia with armed drones for the war in Ukraine and has denounced Iranian officials for cracking down on nationwide protests that began in September.