US rejects Iranian state media report agreeing prisoner exchange | Iran News

The United States immediately denied the Iranian state television report that agreements had been reached between Tehran and Washington, that the prisoners would be seen exchanged, and that Tehran would receive billions of dollars.

An unnamed official quoted by Iranian state television said on Sunday that the agreement between the US and Tehran involved the exchange of prisoners in exchange for the release of $ 7 billion in frozen funds in Iran.

State television reports, citing an unnamed Iranian official, that the British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe would be released once Britain paid off its military equipment debt to Tehran.

A British Foreign Office official downplayed the report.

The Iranian state television official said: “The Americans agreed to pay $ 7 billion and exchange four Iranians who were avoiding punishment for four U.S. spies who served part of their sentence.” He did not name the Iranians that Tehran wanted to liberate.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price immediately denied the Iranian state television report.

“The reports that an agreement has been reached in exchange for the prisoners are not true,” Price said.

“As we have said, we always raise cases of Americans arrested or missing in Iran. We will not stop until we are able to reunite with their families.”

Chief of Staff Ron Klain Biden also denied the U.S. report, and told CBS’s Face the Nation “unfortunately that report is not true. There is no agreement to release those four Americans.”

“We’re releasing it very hard,” Klain said. “We raise that with Iran and our interlocutors all the time, but so far there is no agreement.”

NEWS: News of allegations exchanged with a prisoner #Iran @WHCOS Ron Klain tells it @jdickerson: “Unfortunately, this report is not true. There is no agreement to release these four Americans.” pic.twitter.com/aLIrHlEneg

– Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) May 2, 2021

Iran’s UN envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi said on Sunday that the report could not be confirmed, adding that Tehran had always asked Washington to exchange full prisoners.

Tehran has four well-known Americans in prison. Among them are Baquer and Siamak Namazi, environmentalist Morad Tahbaz and Iranian-American businessman Emad Shargi.

Iran’s state television reports come between a tougher power struggle and a broader power struggle between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s relatively moderate government. That conflict has escalated as Iran reaches its June 18 presidential election.

Hardline has long anonymously released reports against Vienna diplomats in an attempt to negotiate the return of a nuclear deal with world powers.

It was not immediately clear whether Sunday’s report indicated another way to suspend negotiations with Rouhani officials or to suspend negotiations on frozen funds and prisoner exchanges with the West.

No agreement to release the UK national

Iranian state television also quoted the official as saying the UK had reached an agreement to pay £ 400 million ($ 553 million) to watch the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

British officials underestimated the report. The foreign ministry said the country “continues to explore options for resolving this 40-year-old case and will not comment further while legal discussions are taking place.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced last week a full-year prison sentence, said his lawyer, accused of spreading “propaganda against the system” for participating in a protest in front of the embassy in London in Iran in 2009.

That happened after he served a five-year prison sentence in Iran after being convicted of allegedly ousting the Iranian government, an accusation denied by him, his supporters and rights groups.

He was arrested at the Tehran airport in April 2016 while working for the charity arm of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, where he was returning home to Britain after visiting his family.

Richard Ratcliffe, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, told the Associated Press that he was not aware of any exchanges in the works.

“We didn’t hear anything,” he said. “Of course we probably wouldn’t, but my instinct is to be skeptical right now.”

Earlier on Sunday, UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab told the BBC he believed Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “illegal” in Iran as he considers it “torture”.

“I think they treated me in the most offensive and twisted way,” Raabe said.

“I believe that being treated is torture and there is a very clear and unequivocal obligation to release the Iranians themselves and themselves and all those who immediately and unconditionally repeal them.”

Negotiations underway

Last week, cabinet spokesman Ali Rabiei warned that the exchange of prisoners between Iran and the US could be in the works, saying the idea was “always on the agenda” and asserting that the judiciary was “ready”.

Following his remarks, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tehran hoped for a major prisoner exchange in the Vienna negotiations. A similar exchange came with the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Tehran is now negotiating with world powers, both with the US and with the US returning to the 2015 nuclear deal, which limited uranium enrichment in exchange for the removal of economic sanctions.

As the negotiations progressed, Iranian negotiators there offered encouraging comments, with state television stations holding maximalist positions citing anonymous sources.

This saw Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, preside over the talks, reprimanding him last week on Twitter for English state television, Press TV.

I don’t know who the “informed source” of Vienna Press TV is, but it’s certainly not “informed”.

– Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) April 20, 2021

“I don’t know who is the‘ informed source ’of Press TV Vienna, but it is certainly not‘ informed ’,” Araghchi wrote.