Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told state TV Sunday that “Regarding the exchange of current prisoners between Iran and the US, we have reached an agreement within the past few days. If everything goes well on the American side, I think we will witness a prisoner exchange in the near future. We see this as an entirely humanitarian case.”
A White House official immediately denied Amir-Abdollahian's statement about the prisoner swap, reiterating that the United States was committed to securing the release of Americans held in Iran. Amir-Abdollahian claimed that a document laying out the exchange had been “indirectly signed and approved” since early March 2022, without saying who would be exchanged in the prisoner swap.
One of several Americans held in Iran is Siamak Namazi, a businessman with dual US-Iranian citizenship, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016 on charges of espionage and cooperating with the US government. Emad Sharghi, another Iranian-American businessman, was arrested in 2018 when he was working for a tech investment company. Iranian-American environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, who also holds British citizenship, is a third prisoner.
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told the AP that the comments are “another especially cruel lie that only adds to the suffering of their families.” “We are working relentlessly to secure the release of the three wrongfully detained Americans in Iran,” Price said. “We will not stop until they are...
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