The Biden administration has agreed to unfreeze $6 billion in Iran financial assets and release a “handful” of Iranian nationals in exchange for five Americans taken prisoner by Iran on dubious espionage charges.
The Iranian mission to the US said on Thursday, “Iran’s frozen funds in South Korea will be unblocked and transferred to Qatar,” referring to the $6 billion.
New York Times and Reuters confirmed the deal’s financial aspects after speaking with US sources.
Sources told the Times they had identified the five American prisoners as Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi, and Morad Tahbaz, plus two others Biden did not name.
The other two prisoners are a “scientist” and a “businessman,” according to reports.
Siamak Namazi was taken hostage just over a year after I was. We were held in the same section of Evin prison, probably just a few feet from each other, yet we never met. He wasn’t released when I was. Unfathomably, almost 7 years later he’s still there. https://t.co/lj6KpoUbda
— Jason Rezaian (@jrezaian) July 1, 2022
As Brietbart reported:
The best-known of the named three is Siamak Namazi, 51, who was arrested in October 2015 while he was visiting family in Tehran. Namazi was a supporter of the Iranian regime and advocate of closer U.S.-Iran relations who might have fallen victim to a power struggle between secular and theocratic factions within the government.
Siamak Namazi’s elderly father, Baquer was also held captive by Iran and was released in October 2022, after seven years in prison, for health reasons. Both Namazis were convicted of “collaborating with a hostile power,” namely the United States, in a secret 2016 “trial.”
In July 2022, Namazi wrote an NYT op-ed from prison entitled “I’m An American, Why Have I Been Left to Rot as a Hostage of Iran?” He said he felt compelled to write the piece because “the Biden administration’s approach to rescuing Americans in distress in Iran has failed spectacularly so far.”
“The ugly reality is that Iran will free its captives only if offered sufficient incentives,” Namazi said, a prediction that would seem to have been proven accurate by the gigantic payoff Iran was ultimately given to secure his release.
In fact, Namazi, in July 2022, described an Iranian proposal that seemed fairly close to what the Biden administration agreed to just over a year later. He accused President Joe Biden of dragging his feet on sealing the deal because he wanted to use the frozen Iranian assets as leverage to restart nuclear deal talks.
Siamak Namazi mentioned Morad Tahbaz and Emad Shargi in his editorial, in addition to his then-imprisoned father Baquer.
Tahbaz, 67, is a British-American conservationist with Iranian roots arrested during a regime crackdown on environmental activists in 2018. He was sentenced to ten years in prison on espionage charges, briefly released to house arrest in 2022, and then marched back into prison.
“I think being told since Biden has taken office that our loved ones are a priority, and then seeing no action — it is hard to hold hope,” Morad’s daughter Tara Tahbaz said in April.
She said her father was suffering from prostate cancer and contracted Wuhan coronavirus three times while in prison.
Emad Shargi, 58, was arrested in April 2018 after their wife, Bahareh decided to move to Tehran. The Iranian government later claimed Emad was convicted in absentia on murky espionage charges.
“While this is an encouraging step, these U.S. citizens — Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz, Emad Shargi, and two Americans who at this time wish to remain private — should have never been detained in the first place,” said National Security Council (NSC) spokeswoman Adrienne Watson.
“We will continue to monitor their condition as closely as possible. Of course, we will not rest until they are all back home in the United States,” Watson said.
“Until that time, negotiations for their eventual release remain ongoing and are delicate. We will, therefore, have little in the way of details to provide about the state of their house arrest or about our efforts to secure their freedom,” Watson added.
Fox News on Thursday quoted “a source familiar with the situation” who said, “We expect this process to take weeks before they return home to the U.S.”
“While I hope this will be the first step to their ultimate release, this is, at best, the beginning of the end and nothing more. But there are simply no guarantees about what happens from here,” lawyer Jared Genser said.
READ: Trump Fires Warning Shot to Russia, China and Iran: They ‘WILL’ Respect Us
Republicans seem to vacation as much as Joe…because they’re never around even to TRY stopping Joe whenever he sells us out to one of our enemies.
Well…10% for the ‘big guy’ is a substantial sum. $600 million. Indeed it will be properly laundered and Joe will not get it all. He must pay off all the swamp creatures that support his illicit residency in the Whitehouse..