Trump: Iran has released Navy veteran after 2 years

WASHINGTON – Iran released an American Navy veteran, Michael White, who had been imprisoned by Tehran’s leaders for nearly two years, his mother and President Donald Trump announced Thursday.

“I have been living a nightmare,” Joanne White said in a family statement released Thursday.

“I am blessed to announce that the nightmare is over, and my son is safely in American custody and on his way home,” she said, thanking the Trump administration and the State Department.

Trump tweeted about White’s release Thursday.

“I am (happy to) announce that Navy Veteran, Michael White, who has been detained by Iran for 683 days, is on a Swiss plane that just left Iranian Airspace,” Trump tweeted. “We expect him to be home with his family in America very soon.”

White, 48, a veteran from California, was sentenced in 2019 to 10 years in an Iranian prison after being convicted of insulting Iran’s supreme leader and posting private information online. Joanne White told The New York Times last year that her son had gone to visit his girlfriend and that he’d been held in Iran since July 2018.

White’s release came two days after the United States deported an Iranian scientist, Sirous Asgari, who was acquitted of trying to steal secret research from Case Western Reserve University.

White had been granted a medical furlough after he contracted COVID-19 in an Iranian prison in March. He was transferred into the custody of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran.