Iran frees Navy veteran
Iran on Thursday freed Michael R. White, a Navy veteran whose nearly twoyear incarceration had become another sore point in the country’s increasingly tense relationship with the United States.
White was flown out of the country a day after U.S. immigration authorities returned an Iranian scientist to Iran. Both men had been infected with the coronavirus while in custody.
White’s mother, Joanne, announced in a statement that her son was on his way home. President Donald Trump later tweeted that White was safely out of Iranian airspace on a Swiss government jet.
“For the past 683 days my son, Michael, has been held hostage in Iran by the IRGC and I have been living a nightmare,” White said in a statement, referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. “I am blessed to announce that the nightmare is over, and my son is safely on his way home.”
It was not clear where he would arrive in the United States or when he might speak about his ordeal. “In time, Michael will tell it himself, his way,” his mother said in the statement. “Until then, we’d like to respectfully ask that the media respect our family’s privacy.”
The release of White, 48, a cancer patient, came amid intensifying speculation that he would be freed following the release of the Iranian scientist, Sirous Asgari. Asgari arrived in Tehran on Wednesday.
U.S. officials had insisted the two cases were not linked. But Iranian officials had suggested last month that once the scientist was back in Iran, they would look favorably at permitting White to go home.
The State Department did not immediately respond to queries about White’s release. Trump said on Twitter that White would be “home with his family in America very soon.”
For Trump, the news of White’s release offered a diversion from the multiple crises that have rocked his administration — his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the widespread protests against the police killing of George Floyd and other African-Americans, and his bellicose threat to deploy the military to crush urban unrest.
White, of Imperial City, Calif., was arrested in July 2018 while visiting an Iranian woman, whom his family said he had met on the internet, in the northeast city of Mashhad.
He was convicted of privacy violations and of insulting Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. Iranian prosecutors also suggested he was a spy.
His mother did not know he had been imprisoned until months afterward. She repeatedly called on Iranian authorities to free him, insisting that he had done nothing wrong and that his health was in danger. White had been treated for throat cancer before he went to Iran.
He was furloughed from prison a few months ago when the coronavirus became a crisis in Iran. Swiss diplomats, who act on behalf of the United States in Iran, have been looking after his case.