Iranian Foreign Minister said on Wednesday that the recent prisoner swap and assets release deal between Tehran and Washington will once again put U.S. promises to the test.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a post on X, previously known as Twitter, while elaborating on the recent unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian funds that were blocked by the United States for some years in a number of banks in the Republic of Korea (ROK).
Amir-Abdollahian added the unfreezing of the assets and their transfer to a European bank was an achievement in line with the Iranian government’s efforts to pursue diplomacy with dignity, as stressed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“Of course, this stage of the agreement is a retest of the United States (commitment to its pledges).”
The Iranian foreign minister stressed that the country would continue its diplomatic efforts to lift the sanctions and prepare the ground for all parties’ return to their commitments toward Iran under a 2015 nuclear deal.
Last week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said that the ROK banks are unfreezing Iran’s assets, the amount of which was put at 6 billion dollars, and a number of “illegally” jailed Iranians in the United States will be soon released.
On Friday, Mohammad Jamshidi, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s deputy chief of staff for political affairs, said in a post on X that simultaneously with the release of the held Iranians in the United States and the full transfer of the frozen Iranian assets, a number of U.S. prisoners in Iran will leave.
Iran signed the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with world powers in July 2015, agreeing to put some curbs on its nuclear program in return for the removal of the sanctions on the country. The U.S. pulled out of the deal in May 2018 and reimposed its unilateral sanctions on Tehran, prompting the latter to reduce some of its nuclear commitments under the deal.
The talks on the JCPOA’s revival began in April 2021 in Vienna, Austria. No breakthrough has been achieved after the latest round of talks in August 2022.
