Five US prisoners detained in Iran, some for nearly a decade, have left the country by plane to Qatar, as part of a controversial prisoner swap involving the unfreezing by the Biden administration of $6bn (£4.8bn) of Iranian oil money. Tehran and Washington had agreed to swap five prisoners each, including the conservationist Morad Tahbaz, a British-American citizen. The US state department says the money that is being released is oil money owed to Iran and frozen by the Trump administration in 2018 when the US left the Iran nuclear deal. The deal is a diplomatic win for Qatar as a mediator between two countries that deeply distrust one another. Iranian Americans, whose US citizenship is not recognised by Tehran, are often pawns between the two nations.

Source: The Guardian September 18, 2023 15:16 UTC