DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s top diplomat said Sunday that a prisoner swap with the United States is imminent, though he offered no evidence of it. US officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has made similar comments in the past, without any swaps taking place. Some of the comments have appeared to be an attempt to garner domestic support and prop up the national currency, amid massive protests against Iran’s theocracy.
Still, in an interview on Sunday with Iranian state television, Amirabdollahian said Iran had “reached an agreement in recent days on a prisoner exchange between Iran and the United States.”
“If all goes well on the American side, I think we will see the prisoner exchange in the short term,” he added. He maintained that a document detailing the circumstances of the exchange had been “approved and signed” since March 2022.
Neither the State Department nor the White House returned messages asking for comment.
Iran routinely detains people with Western passports in order to exchange them with foreign powers.
Currently, there are at least four US citizens being held in Iranian jails on widely disputed espionage charges.
The evidence against him has not been published. All the detainees have dual nationality, American and Iranian, which is not recognized by Tehran.
In recent days, however, Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American detainee, was allowed to be interviewed by CNN from Tehran’s Evin prison, which would not have been possible without the authorization of Iranian security forces.