The United States and Iran are expected to exchange five prisoners each on Monday with the intervention of Qatar. In return, Washington will unfreeze six billion dollars of Iranian oil money that has been stored in South Korea since 2018.
Tehran and Washington are expected to exchange five prisoners each. Iran is said to have released four men and one woman who also hold Iranian passports. Among them is also a nature conservationist Morad Tahbaz, a British-American citizen. Five Iranian citizens, most of whom were imprisoned for violating US sanctions, are expected to be released from the US. Two are said to have returned to Qatar, while three are said to remain in the US at their own request.
According to media reports, five Americans were supposed to fly from Tehran to Qatar, and from there to Washington.
The diplomats of the two countries are said to have been preparing the agreement for several months.
Republicans and some former Iranian political prisoners have criticized the US president Joe Biden, that he made a deal with Iran, as they warn that this will only encourage Tehran to commit new kidnappings. But the U.S. State Department emphasized that the funds to be freed up under the deal are Iranian oil money that the Trump administration froze in 2018 when the U.S. pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.
The aforementioned money was earned by Iran by selling oil to South Korea, and due to the prisoner exchange agreement, the South Korean bank had already transferred these funds to Qatar, which was the mediator in the agreement.
At the same time, Qatar assured that the mentioned money will be spent in Iran only on food, agricultural products and medicine, i.e. on goods that are not subject to international sanctions. But critics say it will be impossible to control.
Source: Rtvslo
