Iran has moved five Iranian-Americans from prison to house arrest in exchange for billions of dollars frozen in South Korea.
A spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council confirmed the Americans’ release in a statement. The detained US citizens include Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz, as well as two others, a man and a woman, who asked that their identity not be made public.
While Washington considered the step “encouraging”, it confirmed that “sensitive” and “delicate” negotiations were still underway for the final release of the five Americans.
Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council, described the negotiations for the release as “ongoing” and delicate.”
“While this is an encouraging step, these US citizens ... should have never been detained in the first place,” she said in a statement.
Sources quoted by Reuters said that Iran could free the five detained US citizens as part of a deal under which $6 billion in Iranian funds in South Korea would be unfrozen.
Top US diplomat Antony Blinken described a process that he expects will lead to their return to the United States.
Reuters reported that Iran allowed four detained US citizens to move into house arrest from Tehran’s Evin prison, citing a lawyer for one of the detainees. A fifth was already under home confinement.
Jared Genser, the lawyer for Namazi, strongly cautioned against being overly optimistic about freedom for the Americans until they are actually out of Iran.
“There are simply no guarantees about what happens from here,” he told CNN.
Regarding Iran’s frozen funds, The New York Times reported that the agreement, which is expected to take between four and six weeks, provides for the release of about six billion dollars of Iranian oil revenues frozen in South Korea, and placing them in an account with the Qatari Central Bank.
Doha has tried during the past months to enter the mediation line between Iran and the United States, after the faltering of the nuclear negotiations. The governor of the Central Bank of Iran, Mohammad Reza Farzin, held talks in Doha last June, after the US administration agreed to grant Iraq an exemption from sanctions to pay $2.7 billion of frozen Iranian funds.
