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Iran’s Judiciary Rules Out Swap for Condemned Iranian-Swedish Man

Cars drive along a street in Tehran, Iran May 1, 2022. (West Asia News Agency via Reuters)
Cars drive along a street in Tehran, Iran May 1, 2022. (West Asia News Agency via Reuters)
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Iran’s Judiciary Rules Out Swap for Condemned Iranian-Swedish Man

Cars drive along a street in Tehran, Iran May 1, 2022. (West Asia News Agency via Reuters)
Cars drive along a street in Tehran, Iran May 1, 2022. (West Asia News Agency via Reuters)

Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian disaster medicine researcher arrested by Iran, will be executed without a possibility of exchange with an Iranian national tried in Sweden, Iran's judiciary spokesperson said on Tuesday.

"Djalali has been sentenced to death on several charges and the verdict is final. The sentence will be carried out," spokesperson Zabihollah Khodaian said, without saying when it would take place.

Last week, Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency reported that the Djalali, sentenced to death on charges of spying for Israel, would be executed by May 21. He was arrested in 2016.

Relations between Sweden and Iran have been tense since Sweden detained and put on trial former Iranian official Hamid Noury on charges of war crimes for the mass execution and torture of political prisoners at an Iranian prison in the 1980s.

Noury's trial, condemned by Iran, ended on Wednesday; the verdict is due in July. He could face a life sentence in Sweden.

"These two issues are not related. Mr. Noury is innocent and Mr. Djalali was arrested two years prior to Mr. Noury's case. There is thus no possibility of an exchange of these two individuals," Khodaian said, adding that Noury's case was "politically motivated."

Indicating greater tensions between Tehran and Stockholm, authorities detained a Swedish man in Iran on Friday, a few days after Sweden's foreign ministry advised against unnecessary travel to the country.

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Biden, Trump Security Advisers Meet to Pass Ceremonial Baton

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (L) hands a baton to incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during an event at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, on January 14, 2025. (AFP)
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (L) hands a baton to incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during an event at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, on January 14, 2025. (AFP)
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Biden, Trump Security Advisers Meet to Pass Ceremonial Baton

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (L) hands a baton to incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during an event at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, on January 14, 2025. (AFP)
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (L) hands a baton to incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during an event at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, on January 14, 2025. (AFP)

Top advisers to US President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump put aside their differences - mostly - for a symbolic "passing of the torch" event focused on national security issues on Tuesday.

Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan passed a ceremonial baton to US Congressman Mike Waltz, Trump's pick for the same job, in a revival of a Washington ritual organized by the nonpartisan United States Institute of Peace since 2001.

The two men are normally in the media defending their bosses' opposing views on Ukraine, the Middle East and China.

On Tuesday, Waltz and Sullivan politely searched for common ground on a panel designed to project the continuity of power in the United States.

"It's like a very strange, slightly awkward version of 'The Dating Game,' you know the old game where you wrote down your answer, and that person wrote down their answer, and you see how much they match up," said Sullivan.

The event offered a preview of what may be in store on Monday when Trump is inaugurated as president. This peaceful transfer of power, a hallmark of more than two centuries of American democracy, comes four years after Trump disputed and never conceded his loss in the 2020 election.

This time the two sides are talking. Sullivan, at Biden's request, has briefed Waltz privately, at length, on the current administration's policy around the world even as the Trump aide has regularly said the new team will depart radically from it.

Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Biden's envoy Brett McGurk are working together this week to close a ceasefire deal in the region for hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Asked about the key challenges facing the new administration, Waltz and Sullivan on Tuesday both pointed to the California wildfires and China.

Sullivan also highlighted a hostage deal and artificial intelligence as key issues.

Waltz pointed to the US border with Mexico, an area where Trump has ripped Biden's approach.

But he credited the Biden administration with deepening ties between US allies in Asia.

For all the bonhomie between the two men, and the talk of the prospects for peace in the Middle East, Waltz painted a picture of the grimmer decisions awaiting him in his new job.

"Evil does exist," he said. "Sometimes you just have to put bombs on foreheads."