U.S. denies claims of prisoner exchange
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United States on Sunday immediately denied a report by Iranian state-run television that deals had been reached for the Islamic Republic to release U.S. and British prisoners in exchange for Tehran receiving billions of dollars.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the report represented a move by the hard-liners running the Iranian broadcaster to disrupt negotiations with the West amid talks in Vienna on Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal.
It also wasn’t known if there had been any ongoing negotiations with the West over frozen funds and prisoner exchanges, both of which accompanied the 2015 atomic accord.
Even after an initial American denial, an anchorwoman on Iranian state TV still repeated the announcement.
“Some sources say four Iranian prisoners are to be released and $7 billion are to be received by Iran in exchange for releasing four American spies,“the anchorwoman said.
She described the claimed deal as coming due to congressional pressure on President Joe Biden and “his urgent need to show progress made in the Iran case.”
But Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht-e Ravanchi, later denied the report of the prisoner swap, saying that it’s “not confirmed,” according to the Telegram channel of state-run IRNA news agency.
“Iran has always emphasized the comprehensive exchange of prisoners between the two countries,” he said, without elaborating.
State TV did not identify the Iranians that Tehran sought to be freed.
State Department spokesman Ned Price immediately denied the Iranian state TV report.
“Reports that a prisoner swap deal has been reached are not true,” Price said. “As we have said, we always raise the cases of Americans detained or missing in Iran. We will not stop until we are able to reunite them with their families.”
Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “unfortunately, that report is untrue. There is no agreement to release these four Americans.”
“We’re working very hard to get them released,” Klain said. “We raise this with Iran and our interlocutors all the time, but so far there’s no agreement.”
Tehran holds four known Americans now in prison: Baquer and Siamak Namazi, environmentalist Morad Tahbaz and Iranian-American businessman Emad Shargi.
Iran long has been accused of holding prisoners with Western ties to be later used as bargaining chips in negotiations.
Although no formal proposal for a swap has yet been presented to officials in Washington, let alone been signed off on by the White House, the specificity of the reports from Iran suggested that working-level consideration of a deal is at least underway.