Five Americans freed in deal with Iran
What happened
A plane carrying five U.S. citizens who’d been imprisoned in Iran touched down at Fort Belvoir, Va., this week, the culmination of a controversial swap that awards Tehran access to $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil funds. The former captives, all Iranian-Americans who were accused by Tehran of espionage, embraced family and friends on the tarmac after Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved the transfer of the $6 billion in sanctioned Iranian oil proceeds held in South Korea to a Qatari bank. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Iran will have access to the funds for food, medicine, and “humanitarian purposes only” in transactions supervised by the U.S. “For almost eight years I have been dreaming of this day,” said one of the freed hostages, Siamak Namazi, who joined the four others and their families in shouting “Freedom!” In the deal, Iran also won the release of five Iranian citizens held by the U.S. on charges of materially aiding the Iranian regime. At least two other Americans remain imprisoned in Iran.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) expressed skepticism that the U.S. can monitor how the $6 billion in unfrozen funds is spent. “Money is fungible,” he said. “It’s going to go into terror proxy operations.” Congressional Republicans said the deal would lead to more hostage taking, but Kirby pushed back against suggestions that the swap was an Iranian triumph. “Ask the families of those five Americans,” he said, “and I think you’d get a different answer.”
What the columnists said
The homecoming of Namazi, Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and two others who asked to remain anonymous is “a relief for them, their families, and friends,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. These Americans languished in Tehran’s nightmarish Evin Prison for years, and we should celebrate their chance to “heal after the trauma of their unjustified incarceration.” Optimists are expressing hope for a U.S.-Iranian thaw, but “the harsh truth is that rewarding hostage taking breeds more of the same.”
Iran is already reneging on its end of the bargain, said Abe Greenwald in Commentary. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi disputed the Biden administration’s claim it could restrict how Iran used the $6 billion, saying the money will go “wherever we need it.” The “best American response” to bad-faith negotiations with hostile regimes is “also the most cold-blooded: no rewarding hostage takers.”
The deal also “increases the odds of an Iranian nuke,” said Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh in The Dispatch. The regime has already enriched uranium beyond the 60 percent civilian-use threshold, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “has no interest” in reviving the 2015 nuclear agreement that the Trump administration killed. The only factor keeping Iran from completing a nuclear weapon is fear of “a U.S. strike.” By offering the “appeasement” of buying hostages’ freedom, Biden weakens that fear, in hopes that Iran “prefers extortion to a nuclear test, at least before November 2024.”