Five Americans are being returned to the United States following a prisoner swap with Iran.
The U.S. has received confirmation that five American citizens freed as part of a deal between the U.S. and Iran are now on a plane headed out of the country to Doha, Qatar, a senior Biden administration official said Monday.
Later Monday, they will be flown back to the U.S.
The Americans being repatriated include Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz, as well as two others who asked that their identity not be made public. All five have been designated as wrongfully detained by U.S. government.
Tahbaz’s wife, Vida, and Namazi’s mother, Effie, were also allowed to leave Iran in the arrangement, according to a U.S. official. Unlike the other five, they had not been jailed by the Iranian regime but had previously been barred from leaving the country.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry first announced the U.S. nationals would be imminently released early Monday morning, fulfilling a deal struck between Washington and Tehran last month, where the U.S. promised to grant clemency to five Iranians and to facilitate Iran’s access to roughly $6 billion in frozen oil revenue on the condition the money be put toward humanitarian purposes.
The seven will be transported via a Qatari aircraft to Doha. From there, U.S. officials say they plan to depart «as quickly as possible» for the Washington, D.C., area, where they will be reunited with their families and the Department of Defense will be on hand to assist families «that might request help for their recovery and integration to normal life.»
The five Iranians involved in the trade have either been charged with or convicted of nonviolent offenses. Two do not have legal standing to stay in the U.S. and will be transported by U.S. Marshals Service to Doha and then travel on to Iran.
Two more are lawful permanent residents of the U.S., and one is a dual Iranian American citizen. Administration officials did not say whether they would remain the U.S.
The five detained Americans all served time in Iran’s notorious Evin prison but were placed on house arrest when Tehran and Washington reached a deal-in-principle.
