US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the initial deal to end the suffering of five Iranian-American detainees in Iran does not mean that Iran would be getting any sanctions relief.
The five Americans will be allowed to leave Iran after $6 billion of Iranian funds held in South Korea get unfrozen. However, the funds would only be used for humanitarian purposes.
This breakthrough follows months of tensions between Iran on one hand and the US and its allies on the other, knowing that the US dispatched military reinforcements to the Gulf region to protect commercial and civilian ships and oil tankers from the increasing Iranian piracy.
The deal offered a spark of hope that the two countries might move past the specter of a military confrontation that had long shadowed the relationship, according to The New York Times.
Henry Rome, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, described the potential release of the five Iranian Americans as a step forward "for Washington and Tehran’s efforts to lower tensions as they eye a return to formal nuclear negotiations later this year”.
Rome added that the Biden administration was unlikely to seek a new nuclear agreement ahead of the 2024 election, given the issue’s political volatility.
Iran may feel the same way, given Mr. Trump’s possible return to the Oval Office.
"My belief is that this is the beginning of the end of their nightmare," Blinken said at a press conference in Washington. "There's more work to be done to actually bring them home."
White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson confirmed that the five were all out of prison and under house arrest, saying they should never have been detained and the White House would have little more to add because talks for their eventual release "remain ongoing and are delicate."
“It’s only a first step and every day they continue to be robbed of their freedom is a day too many,” said the Biden administration’s suspended special envoy on Iran, Robert Malley. “This is welcome news too long in coming. I know my colleagues won’t rest until they all return home.”
The Wall Street Journal said Iran had now diluted a small of the 60 percent enriched uranium and slowed the rate of accumulating new material.
The deal comes as Iran and the United States appear to be observing an informal agreement under which Iran has limited its nuclear program and restrained proxy militias in Iraq and Syria to avoid harsh American reprisals.
US officials have repeatedly denied that they reached any nuclear “deal” with Iran after indirect talks held in Oman earlier this year. But officials from several countries have described those discussions, and Iran appears to be adhering to an agreement.
Its parameters include Iranian enrichment of uranium at purity levels no higher than 60 percent, and no significant attacks on US troops by Iranian proxy forces in Syria and Iraq.
Two senior Israeli defense officials said the deal involving the prisoners and the frozen funds is part of the broader understandings reached in Oman. These understandings, according to the officials, are already being implemented on the ground.
One senior US military official said that there has been decreased activity by Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq against US troops there in recent weeks.
One of the Israeli officials added that while Iran has sent military assistance, including potent drones, to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine last year, Moscow would like more than it has received.
