Cabinet spokesman Ali Rabiei also warned that another exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States was possible, saying that “the concept of prisoner exchange has been on the agenda”, adding that they deserve to be released due to “human concerns. “
Rabiei gave the main points of the number of Iranians detained in the United States and said disclosure of their names could harm them. However, he said, “his number is higher than that of American prisoners in Iran. “
In 2019, a prisoner exchange saw Iran, a Chinese-American educator at Princeton who had been detained for 3 years on widely criticized espionage charges. At the time, Tehran said the U. S. government had about 20 Iranian citizens in prison.
Iran has at times expressed its readiness to exchange prisoners with the United States, but when they take place, exchanges are perceived as in frequent diplomatic advances between Tehran and Washington.
On Tuesday, Rabiei said the Iranian judiciary had also declared himself “ready” for an exchange. His statements set the moment through Iranian officials about the imaginable release of a prisoner in less than two weeks.
Last week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh commented that Tehran hopes to conduct a primary prisoner exchange as a component of the ongoing negotiations in Vienna, which accompanied the 2015 nuclear agreement with global powers.
Iranian media have in recent days met seven Iranians detained throughout the United States by name, while the United States calls on Iran to release U. S. criminals, adding Siamak and Baquer Namazi, who are serving 10-year criminal convictions for espionage.
Siamak Namazi, an 46-year-old businessman who promoted closer ties between Iran and the West, was arrested in October 2015. Su 81-year-old Father Baquer, a former UNICEF representative who served as governor of Iran’s oil-rich Iranian province of Juzestan under Shah,U. S. -backed, was arrested in February 2016 , attracted by Iran to the concern of his imprisoned son.
Among the Americans arrested in Iran is environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian of U. S. and British citizenship sentenced to 10 years in prison.
There are other Western citizens detained in Iran, adding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British woman who, after serving a five-year criminal sentence for espionage, was sentenced to a sixth year of crime or dissemination of “propaganda opposed to the system” for participating in an open-air demonstration at the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009.
Iran does not recognize dual nationality, which means detainees cannot obtain consular assistance. Both the Namazis and other citizens with dual nationality were the subject of closed secret fee hearings before the Revolutionary Court of Iran, which deals with cases involving alleged attempts to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. government.
As nuclear talks begin Tuesday in Vienna after a brief pause, Tehran insisted that the United States lift all sanctions imposed by then-President Donald Trump after pulling the United States out of the nuclear deal, adding those unrelated to its nuclear settlement program.
Meanwhile, Washington said Iran will have to comply with all restrictions imposed under the agreement. In reaction to Trump’s withdrawal, Iran gradually violated the terms of the deal, adding uranium enrichment limits.
Washington is not in the Vienna talks, but a US delegation is in the Austrian capital and representatives of the other powers move between it and the Iranian delegation.
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