12.03.2023
Washington denies the alleged agreement disclosed by Tehran.
The Government of Iran affirmed this Sunday that it has agreed to the exchange of prisoners with the United Statessomething that Washington has categorically denied is going to happen.
“We have reached an agreement on the issue of the exchange of prisoners,” Iran’s foreign minister told Iranian television. Iran, Hosein Amir Abdolahian. On the occasion, he pointed out that “if everything goes well, the exchange (of prisoners) will take place in the next few days.”
The head of Iranian diplomacy said that Tehran and Washington signed a “document indirectly” in March 2022 for the exchange of prisoners and the conditions for its implementation have since been prepared. “From our point of view we are ready, and the US side is in the final part of technical issues,” according to Abdolahian.
However, State Department spokesman Ned Price almost immediately denied the deal. “Statements by Iranian officials that a prisoner exchange deal has been reached is another cruel lie that only adds suffering to families,” Price said, according to US media including Fox News. “We are working tirelessly to secure the release of the three Americans wrongfully detained in Iran,” Price added.
Some 30 Iranians are jailed abroad on charges related to US economic sanctions, about half of them in the United States. At the same time, at least a dozen dual Iranian or foreign nationals, three of them Americans, are serving sentences in Iranian jails.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been accused of using prisoners, especially those with dual nationality but also from other countries, as a measure of pressure or for prisoner exchanges. This has been dubbed by other countries and human rights organizations as Iran’s “hostage diplomacy.”
mn (efe, afp)