Details of the final moments of the deal to release 5 American prisoners in Iran

POSTED ON2023-10-14 BY SOTALIRAQ

[size=52]Details of the final moments of the deal to release 5 American prisoners in Iran[/size]

[size=45]
Zainab Makki
After years of painstaking negotiations with Iran, and with the mediation of the Arab Gulf states, senior aides to US President Joe Biden reached an agreement on June 6 that would release 4 Americans detained in one of the worst Iranian prisons. In return, the United States lifts the freeze on $6 billion. Dollars from Iranian oil revenues and charges against Iranians accused of violating US sanctions are dropped.[/size]
[size=45]According to a report published by the New York Times, the American negotiators knew that there could still be obstacles at the last minute, but things were moving forward, and indeed the prison guards in Tehran gathered the Americans and took them to an office and asked them to pack their bags. Their release was imminent, they told them “they should be ready to return home within 3 days.”[/size]
[size=45]But White House officials were about to receive some bad news when, just one day after the agreement was reached, they learned from the FBI that Iran had detained another American citizen, a retired woman from California who was doing relief work in Afghanistan.[/size]
[size=45]It was not clear then, and even now, whether the woman's detention was a strategic decision or whether she was simply caught up in Iran's security net, a situation in which the country's left hand does not know what its right hand is doing.[/size]
[size=45]Either way, US officials were enthusiastic, but there was no way Biden could sign a deal that would leave that woman behind. She had to be released, too.[/size]
[size=45]Indeed, the deal collapsed, and the prisoners, who expected to return home any day, were frustrated. They expected that it would be several more weeks before American officials, still working in secret, got the talks back on track, with the help of diplomats in Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.[/size]
[size=45]When Biden finally announced last Monday that Americans - including the newly arrested woman - were on their way home, it was the culmination of years of delicate negotiations that focused not only on the release of prisoners, but also on efforts to deprive Fuse tensions with Iran and confront what the United States sees as Tehran's destabilizing activities throughout the Middle East.[/size]
[size=45]“When all the pieces finally fall into place, there is a collective sigh of relief,” said the president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, “but until that moment we are all holding our breath. We do not want the terrible ordeal these Americans are enduring to last one day longer than it has to.” “.[/size]
[size=45]Throughout this period, officials in the United States, Iran, and Qatar were telling the story of those negotiations. Relatives and lawyers of some of the prisoners, and representatives of other organizations familiar with the talks, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the secret talks about the prisoners.[/size]
[size=45]The result, they said, is proof that even fierce adversaries can sometimes find their way to an agreement.[/size]
[size=45]Nuclear talks stopped[/size]
[size=45]Work to bring Americans home began in early 2021, just weeks after Biden took office.[/size]
[size=45]Siamak Namazi, Imad Sharqi, and Murad Tahbaz were imprisoned on baseless espionage charges and held in Evin Prison, which was notorious for torture accusations and a symbol of the regime’s authoritarian approach to justice.[/size]
[size=45]Biden and his advisers were determined to get them out one way or another, and for months, Secretary of State Antony Blinken carried the names of those detained in his pocket.[/size]
[size=45]First, the United States and Iran needed to find ways to talk about broader issues. Throughout 2021 and the first half of 2022, Washington and Tehran hoped they could revive the Obama-era nuclear deal, which limited Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Former President Donald Trump has abandoned the deal.[/size]
[size=45]Now, American and Iranian officials have engaged in indirect talks in Vienna, and on a separate track, the Biden administration has pushed for a way to release imprisoned Americans.[/size]
[size=45]But by August last year, those talks had completely collapsed, as Iran was making demands about its nuclear program that the United States could not accept, and was rapidly increasing uranium enrichment to 20%, then 60%, and stockpiling beyond the levels approved in the Obama deal that It no longer exists now.[/size]
[size=45]Senior Iranian officials sided with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and reports have emerged of Iranian drones being sold to Russia and being used to target civilians.[/size]
[size=45]Behind the scenes, discussions about releasing imprisoned Americans have become entangled with the broader nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.[/size]
[size=45]For negotiators on both sides, it seemed clear that the United States would not agree to a costly deal for prisoners when nuclear negotiations collapsed.[/size]
[size=45]Independent deal[/size]
[size=45]“Throughout 2021 and most of 2022, the United States appeared to prefer to package the detainees’ deal in restoring the JCPOA,” said Iranian official at the International Crisis Group, Ali Vaez, who was familiar with the negotiations on both the American and Iranian sides. “It was only late last year, when it closed The window to nuclear diplomacy, a stand-alone deal for the detainees was considered.”[/size]
[size=45]Iran wanted to be able to access $6 billion in oil revenue that was sitting in accounts in South Korea, which could hardly be used due to currency issues, and Iranian negotiators demanded that the money be moved in a way they could use it.[/size]
[size=45]The United States had been insisting that the money should be placed in restricted accounts, with controls that would make it impossible to use it for anything other than food, medicine, medical devices or agriculture, but the Iranians rejected the proposal outright.[/size]
[size=45]A month later, in mid-September, nationwide protests erupted across Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the Morality Police. The Iranian government responded with brutal force, and scenes of young men being shot, killed, beaten and arrested dominated newspaper headlines around Iran.[/size]
[size=45]Iranian forces have intensified their attacks on American forces in Syria, and many in the Iranian American diaspora have organized protests in cities across the United States and pressured Washington to end all negotiations with Iran and support Iranians fighting for democratic change.[/size]
[size=45]By this time, Iran had arrested a fourth American, a businessman and scientist whose identity has been withheld, and the Biden administration continued to press for their release.[/size]
[size=45]Robert Malley, who served as Iran's envoy to the United States, met several times with Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Iravani. These were the only major face-to-face discussions between the United States and Iran about prisoners, but they did not result in a breakthrough, and Iravani did not respond. ” to questions from The New York Times about the talks.[/size]
[size=45]Families of detainees[/size]
[size=45]Families of American detainees and their lawyers have publicly pressured Biden to put aside politics and bring their loved ones home.[/size]
[size=45]Namazi, a 51-year-old businessman, gave an interview to CNN in March from Evin prison in which he said that successive American presidents had left him behind to rot in an Iranian cell, and he asked for help.[/size]
[size=45]“I was a hostage for 7 and a half years, 6 times as long as the hostage crisis,” Namazi told CNN, referring to the Americans who were taken hostage in Iran during the 1979 revolution and held for 444 days.[/size]
[size=45]By this spring, agreement on anything that involved concessions to Iran seemed a million miles away.[/size]
[size=45]Resumption of shuttle diplomacy[/size]
[size=45]American diplomats arrived in Oman in May with a heavy dose of skepticism, and Iran had sent word, through intermediaries, that Tehran wanted to reduce tensions.[/size]
[size=45]Just weeks ago, Biden ordered American fighter jets to attack an ammunition depot in eastern Syria linked to Iranian intelligence services, and his administration believes that the attack, a direct response to Iran’s complicity in the first death of an American contractor in Syria in years, has shaken the Iranians, but American officials - including Brett McGurk, a veteran Middle East diplomat - were skeptical about Iran's seriousness.[/size]
[size=45]McGurk and his American team gathered in one room in a hotel in Muscat, the capital of Oman, and the Iranian delegation, headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, met in another delegation. For hours, the Omani mediators moved back and forth between the two groups, who could see each other through the windows. .[/size]
[size=45]The message from McGurk was simple: “If Iran wants to reduce tensions, and perhaps even resume discussions about the country’s nuclear program, it should stop attacking American forces.”[/size]
[size=45]Through the windows, McGurk could see the Iranians arguing, an indication that there was hardly a consensus, but the messages returned by the Omani mediators contained a surprise.[/size]
[size=45]The Iranians wanted concessions on easing sanctions on oil sales, but were willing to consider US demands for an exchange that would release imprisoned Americans.[/size]
[size=45]Within weeks, further talks were arranged in neighboring Gulf state Qatar, which had been trying for years to help broker the release of the Americans.[/size]
[size=45]“Iran decided that if the nuclear agreement with the United States was not sustainable, it had to solve its smaller problems such as exchanging prisoners and reducing tensions in the region,” said Ghaith Gharishi, a political analyst in Iran who advised its Foreign Ministry.[/size]
[size=45]He added, “The approach is that if we eventually untie some of the knots, it could lead to greater openness, easing of sanctions, reaching a nuclear agreement, and the like.”[/size]
[size=45]On June 6, while the Qataris were acting as mediators in Doha, American and Iranian officials reached a written agreement: The Americans would be released, and the United States would allow Iran to purchase humanitarian goods using $6 billion of its profits from oil sales that were stuck in banks in South Korea. The United States will also drop charges against 5 Iranians accused of violating US sanctions.[/size]
[size=45]For McGurk and others in the White House and at the State Department, the flurry of diplomacy in Oman and Qatar this spring was a moment of hope, perhaps a chance to bring Americans home after all. Another delay[/size]
[size=45]But the arrest of the fifth American, a woman from California who was carrying out relief work in Afghanistan, upended any hopes for a quick solution.[/size]
[size=45]For several weeks, McGurk and others in the United States tried to revive the agreement they signed on June 6, and working through mediators again, American officials made it clear that the only way to move forward with the deal was to release it as well.[/size]
[size=45]It took some time to “unpack” the situation, one American official recalled, but once the Iranians agreed to the demand to release the five prisoners, negotiations reached a turning point.[/size]
[size=45]In early August, after a visit by Qatari Minister of State Mohammed Al-Khulaifi to Tehran, the two sides reached a final agreement setting the terms, including the exchange of prisoners and a money transfer mechanism.[/size]
[size=45]There were also conditions that the funds would be kept in Qatar and paid directly to vendors when Iran wanted to make humanitarian purchases of food, medicine and medical equipment.[/size]
[size=45]On August 10, all prisoners were transferred to a hotel in northern Tehran and placed under house arrest awaiting the full transfer of funds.[/size]
[size=45]Finally, on Monday, the Swiss ambassador in Tehran — known as the “protecting force in Iran” for the United States, which has no diplomatic presence there — led two other American citizens to the airport. Iran had agreed to allow Namazi’s mother, Effie, and Morad Tahbaz’s wife, Vida, to leave on the same plane with their relatives.[/size]
[size=45]At the hotel where they were under house arrest, the five American prisoners were also prepared to leave for the airport, where a plane provided by the Qatari government waited to take them to Doha for a Cold War-style exchange on the tarmac and then return home.[/size]
[size=45]But there was another delay, as officials in Iran claimed that not all of the money had reached the bank account in Qatar, and that they would not allow the Americans to leave, and for more than two hours, everyone waited.[/size]
[size=45]In New York, where the president and his aides arrived for the upcoming United Nations General Assembly, national security officials were waiting impatiently, and when Iranian officials confirmed they were satisfied that the money had arrived, the Americans took a 40-minute drive to Tehran airport.[/size]
[size=45]At 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, after a brief stop in Doha, the Americans exited the plane at a military base in northern Virginia, free for the first time since their imprisonment.[/size]
[size=45]Two hours later, Sullivan, the president's national security adviser, posted a photo of Americans gathered on the small government plane, and alongside an emoji of the American flag, he wrote: “Welcome home.”[/size]
[size=45]https://www.sotaliraq.com/2023/10/14/%d8%aa%d9%81%d8%a7%d8%b5%d9%8a%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b8%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%ae%d9%8a%d8%b1%d8%a9-%d9%84%d8%b5%d9%81%d9%82%d8%a9-%d8%a5%d8%b7%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%82-%d8%b3%d8%b1/[/size]