DUBAI: Iran on Tuesday identified five prisoners it hopes will be released in the United States in exchange for five Iranian-Americans now held in Tehran and billions in assets once held by South Korea.
The confirmation of Iran’s UN mission in New York comes as the Biden administration issued a blanket exemption for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money from South Korea to Qatar.
The moves by Tehran and Washington appear to signal that the prisoner swap is continuing, as money once held in South Korean won is converted into euros and moved to Qatar, where Iran will be able to use it for humanitarian purposes.
The list of inmates Tehran wants to free was confirmed by Ali Karimi Magham, a spokesman for the Iranian embassy, in a statement to The Associated Press.
The five individuals that Iran is searching for are: Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, an Iranian who was indicted in 2021 for allegedly failing to register as a foreign agent while lobbying American officials on matters such as nuclear policy; Mehrdad Ansari, an Iranian who was sentenced to 63 months in prison in 2021 for allegedly acquiring equipment that could be used in missiles, electronic warfare, nuclear weapons, and other military equipment; Ali Akbar Salehi, an Iranian who was
Amin Hasanzadeh, an Iranian resident of the United States who was charged by prosecutors in 2019 with allegedly stealing engineering plans from his employer to send to Iran;
Reza Sarhangpour Kafrani, an Iranian accused in 2021 of allegedly illegally exporting laboratory equipment to Iran; and
Kambiz Attar Kashani, an Iranian-American sentenced in February to 30 months in prison for buying “sophisticated, high-end American electronic equipment and software” through front companies in the United Arab Emirates.
The US State Department declined to comment, citing the “sensitivity of this ongoing process”.
The Al-Monitor news website, which relied on a statement from the Iranian mission, reported for the first time on Monday the identity of the Iranians.
On the US side, Washington is pushing for the release of three prisoners: Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American conservationist who was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to 10 years in prison after being held in Iran in 2015 on charges of espionage that have drawn criticism from around the world; Emad Sharghi, a venture capitalist who was also given a 10-year sentence; and Morad Tahbaz.
The fourth and fifth inmates have not been identified. All five are under house arrest in a hotel in Tehran.
Republicans in the US have condemned the exchange’s potential, which is being debated amid heightened hostilities between Iran and the West over its nuclear program as well as a string of incidents and ship seizures that are being blamed on Tehran.
The Pentagon is considering a plan to deploy US troops aboard commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of all oil shipments from the Arabian Gulf pass.
There is also a large deployment of US sailors and marines in the region, alongside F-35s, F-16s and other military aircraft. Meanwhile, Iran supplies Russia with bomb-carrying drones that Moscow uses to target sites during the war in Ukraine.
