By Parisa Hafezi
DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran and the United States have reached an agreement to swap prisoners, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told state TV on Sunday, but Washington called the claim “false”.
“Regarding the issue of prisoner exchange between Iran and the US, we reached an agreement in the last few days and if all goes well on the US side, I think we will see a prisoner exchange in a short period,” said Amirabdollahian.
“From our side, everything is ready, while the US is working on the final technical coordination.”
A White House official denied Amirabdollahian’s statement about the prisoner exchange, but added that the US was committed to securing the release of Americans detained in Iran.
“The claims by Iranian officials that we reached an agreement for the release of US citizens wrongfully detained by Iran are false,” said a spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
A source briefed on the talks said the prisoner exchange was “closer than ever”, but one of the points still to be closed is linked to $7 billion worth of Iranian oil frozen under US sanctions on South Korea.
The source added that Qatar and Switzerland were involved in prisoner exchange talks. Iranian sources told Reuters that two countries in the region were involved in indirect talks between Tehran and Washington.
One of several Americans detained in Iran is Siamak Namazi, a businessman with dual American and Iranian citizenship, who was sentenced in 2016 to 10 years in prison for spying and cooperating with the US government.
Emad Sharghi, an Iranian-American businessman first arrested in 2018 while working for a technology investment firm, is also imprisoned in Iran, as is Iranian-American environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, who also has British citizenship.
For years, Tehran has sought the release of more than a dozen Iranians in the US, including seven dual nationals of the two countries, two Iranians with permanent US residency and four Iranian citizens without legal status in the US.
(Additional reporting by Elwely Elwelly in Dubai, Moira Warburton in Washington and Andrew Mills in the Gulf Newsroom; Editing)
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