2023-09-18 17:04:56
Five Americans imprisoned in Tehran were released on Monday, in exchange for the release of five Iranian prisoners and the unfreezing of Iranian funds.
Tehran and Washington have taken a small step toward each other through a long-planned prisoner exchange. Five American citizensheld in Iran for espionage, and two female relatives were transported to Qatar, from where they can return to the United States.
Across the Atlantic, five Iranian prisoners were released. Two of them also arrived in Doha on Monday to return to Iran. The other three do not want to go to Iran.
“This was not intended as some sort of rapprochement.”
In parallel, Washington released frozen Iranian funds in South Korea, amounting to some 6 billion dollars. “Today, the equivalent of 5,573,492,000 euros was deposited into the account of Iranian banks with two Qatari banks,” said Mohammadreza Farzin, governor of the Iranian Central Bank. The White House assured that these funds could only be used for humanitarian reasons, which Tehran denied. Nasser Kanani, spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, also declared that after this payment, Iran will not have “no more resources blocked in other countries”.
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New US sanctions
This prisoner exchange project was announced on August 10, after months of secret preparations. In the eyes of certain experts, this agreement demonstrates a relative easing of tensions between Iran and the United States, extremely tense since the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal decided in 2018 by former President Donald Trump.
This Monday, however, the White House immediately ruled out the possibility of new diplomatic discussions on a reactivation of the nuclear treaty, obtained hard in 2015. “This was not designed as a kind of rapprochement”, assured John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, on CNN.
On the contrary, the prisoners had not yet landed in Doha when Washington was taking new sanctions against Iran, targeting the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. American President Joe Biden has also promised to “continue to sanction Iran for his provocative actions in the region.
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It must be said that this exchange of prisoners exposes the Democratic President to wrath of the republican opposition, who will not fail to accuse Biden of weakness. Especially since almost a year from presidential electionsthe candidates in the Republican primary are engaged in a race to outbid to dethrone the poll favorite, Donald Trump.
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