Iranian authorities said that they have agreed to a prisoner swap with American officials, a claim that United States President Joe Biden has denied and said is a "cruel lie."
In a statement, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that these remarks from Iranian officials that there has been a deal agreed upon regarding the exchange of prisoners only add to the suffering of the families of those involved.
Iran's Prisoner Exchange Claims
Three American citizens are imprisoned in Iran, namely Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz. American authorities have considered all the individuals to be wrongfully detained in the country.
In a previous claim, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said a prisoner exchange agreement was reached between the two countries. During a Sunday interview, he said that the deal was agreed to recently and added that if everything went well on the Americans' side, the exchange would happen soon, as per CNN.
Amir-Abdollahian said that they were considering the situation as a completely humanitarian case. On the other hand, the US State Department said that no such agreement was reached between the two governments.
In a statement, Price noted that they were working relentlessly to ensure the release of the three wrongfully detained American individuals in Iran. He added that the US government would not stop until they were reunited again with their loved ones.
Furthermore, a White House National Security Council spokesperson said that the claims by Iranian officials regarding a prisoner exchange for the release of US citizens detained in Iran were "false."
A source who was briefed on the talks said that the prisoner exchange is "closer than it has ever been" but noted that one of the remaining sticking points is related to $7 billion worth of frozen Iranian oil funds that were affected by US sanctions in South Korea, according to Reuters.
Spreading Misinformation
They added that the logistics of how the funds would be exchanged and how oversight will be provided still need to be solved. The source spoke under the condition of remaining anonymous due to the sensitivity of the negotiations between the two parties.
The source also said that Qatar and Switzerland were already involved in the prisoner exchange negotiations. On the other hand, Iranian sources said that two regional countries became a part of the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington.
One of the detained Americans, Namazi, is a businessman with dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016 for allegedly spying and cooperating with the US government.
Shargi is an American-Iranian businessman detained in 2018 while working for a tech investment company; the third, Tahbaz, is an American-Iranian environmentalist. Tehran has for years sought to strike a deal regarding releasing more than a dozen Iranians in the United States.
The situation comes as a deputy Iranian foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, made a Sunday trip to Oman, a longtime interlocutor between Tehran and Washington. Furthermore, NBC News said that Amira-Abdollahian's claims came after Iran and Saudi Arabia announced the re-establishment of relations in a deal brokered by China.
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