The 85-year-old Iranian-American, Baqer Namazi, was allowed to leave Iran after 7 years of being prevented from doing so, and his imprisoned son Siamak was released.
Comments from Tehran
• Iranian official media reported, on Sunday, that Tehran now expects to release its stranded assets abroad after “the conclusion of negotiations with the United States on prisoners.”
• The Iranian official “IRNA” news agency reported that the move against Namazi and his son “is linked to the liberation of frozen financial assets in South Korea in favor of Iran.”
• The agency quoted unnamed “informed sources” as predicting “the imminent release of $7 billion of frozen Iranian assets in South Korea, as part of a prisoner release deal between Iran and America.”
• She added that the past weeks witnessed “intensive negotiations mediated by one of the countries in the region for the simultaneous release of prisoners between Iran and America, and billions of dollars in Iranian assets.”
But the US State Department denied the existence of any such link, saying that this was “absolutely wrong.”
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Sunday: “Baqer Namazi was unjustly detained in Iran and then was not allowed to leave the country after serving his sentence despite his repeated requests for urgent medical care.”
He added, “We know that the lifting of the travel ban and the release of his son are related to his medical requirements.”
Iran has tens of billions frozen due to the sanctions, which former US President Donald Trump re-imposed as of 2018, after his country unilaterally withdrew from the international agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program concluded in 2015.
In January 2021, Tehran accused Seoul of taking its assets “hostage”, while the two sides have repeatedly confirmed during the past months that they will hold talks on ways to free these assets.
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