Prisoner exchange ‘ready to be implemented’ with UK, US: Iran
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iran’s deputy foreign minister said on Saturday that prisoner swaps with the United States and United Kingdom are ready to be implemented if the two countries fulfill "their part of the deal."
“We're in a transition period as a democratic transfer of power is underway in our capital,” Abbas Araghchi said on Twitter. Nuclear talks in Vienna “must thus obviously await our new administration. This is what every democracy demands.”
The US and UK “need to understand this and stop linking a humanitarian exchange – ready to be implemented – with the JCPOA,” added Araghchi, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran’s landmark nuclear accord. Prisoners “on all sides may be released tomorrow” if the two countries “fulfill their part of deal,” he added.
Washington confirmed last week that indirect talks on prisoner exchanges were underway and were being treated separately from the nuclear deal.
Arrests of foreigners in Iran - especially dual nationals who are often accused of espionage - have multiplied since former US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from a nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and re-imposed harsh sanctions against Tehran.
Dual nationals from various countries have been detained in Iran, in what campaigners and the British government says is a policy of hostage-taking aimed at pressuring the West. Iran has conducted several exchanges of foreign prisoners, including researchers, with countries holding Iranian nationals.
A detained US Navy veteran returned home in June on the same day an Iranian doctor returned from the US.
Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was freed in November after several years of imprisonment on espionage charges, in exchange for the release of three Iranians detained "abroad on trumped-up charges.”
In May, Iran said it had reached a prisoner exchange deal for the release of $7 billion frozen Iranian oil funds under US sanctions in other countries, which Washington denied.
According to the US Institute of Peace, 13 Iranians were held in US prisons as of July 10, and six US-Iranian nationals are held in Iran on espionage charges. Eight other prisoners detained in the past have so far been released by Iran, and two Iranians have been released by the US.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded the “immediate release” of the British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other detained dual British-Iranian nationals in a phone call with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in March.
Dual British-Iranian national Anoosheh Ashoori is also serving a sentence on charges of “cooperating with a hostile state against the Islamic Republic” according to confessions Amnesty International call “torture-tainted.”
Labour rights activist and British-Iranian national, Mehran Raoof, is arbitrarily detained and is being held in prolonged solitary confinement, Amnesty International wrote in February.