Americans freed from Iran land in US

The flight carrying five Americans freed from Iranian detention has landed back on US soil, two US officials told CNN.

Their plane landed in the Washington, DC, area in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The freed Americans will now have the option to participate in a Department of Defense Program known as PISA (Post Isolation Support Activities) to help them acclimate back to normal life now that they are back in the United States.

The US State Department had declared the five Americans as wrongfully detained.

Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie has joined a chorus of GOP voices criticizing the deal that led to the freeing of five American prisoners by Iran, which included the transfer of $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds.

Speaking to CNN Monday, Christie said he would not have made the deal.

Earlier Monday, White House coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby stressed that the United States can stop a transaction with these funds from taking place if necessary, and US officials have said that if they find misuse of the funds, they can freeze the accounts.

But Senior Republican Party officials denounced the agreement. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence — under whose tenure the White House made two prisoner swap deals with Tehran — criticized President Joe Biden for allowing Iran to “foment terrorism across the Middle East.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the Biden administration of “incentivizing Tehran’s bad behavior.”

And Christie accused Biden of giving "one of the most barbaric regimes in the world" funds to make "dangerous mischief around the world."

When asked what he would have done differently, Christie said he would have done the best he could to get the hostages released, but "you don't get them returned home to make matters worse."

Five American prisoners were freed by Iran on Monday in a Qatar-mediated deal that also included the transfer of some $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds and the release of five Iranian prisoners in the United States.

The carefully choreographed agreement was years in the making and is being seen as a major diplomatic breakthrough for the two foes.

But in a sign that the pact is no indication of a wider thaw in relations, a senior Biden administration official said the deal “has not changed our relationship with Iran in any way.” Soon after the American prisoners took off from Iran, the Biden administration slapped new sanctions on the regime.

The prisoner deal is, however, an example of a new method of unwritten arrangements between Washington and Tehran, analysts say, where smaller mutual concessions are exchanged in the absence of a wider, formal agreement like the one reached in 2015 and abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018.

A new, wide-ranging agreement may be difficult for both sides to achieve as the US heads to presidential elections in November 2024. Such a pact would likely face resistance from Congress, whose approval it would need. And from Iran’s perspective, efforts to forge a new pact with a US administration that could potentially be ousted in those elections would be futile if the next president abandons it.

The Biden administration is unlikely to engage in a “meaningful revival” of the 2015 nuclear deal, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House think tank in London.

The deal comes amid a significant dialing back of tensions between Iran and the US in recent months. Attacks by Iran and its proxies on US interests in the Middle East have almost ceased, and Iran’s oil exports have risen despite Western sanctions on its oil industry. Meanwhile, Iran’s uranium enrichment under its nuclear program has reportedly slowed.

Read more about the tense relations

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Former Vice President Mike Pence attacked President Joe Biden for agreeing to a deal with Iran for the release of five Americans wrongfully detained in Iran in exchange for the US unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian assets.

Pence characterized the prisoners released by the United States as “Iranian operatives” and lambasted the decision to allow President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi to enter the United States to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York.

“When I'm president, I won't give criminals like Raisi a visa to allow them to set foot on American soil and we will never ever pay ransom to terrorists or terrorist states,” he said during a foreign policy speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.

Some background: In a statement Monday, Biden celebrated the release of the five Americans “after enduring years of agony, uncertainty, and suffering.”

Their release represents a significant diplomatic breakthrough after years of complicated indirect negotiations between the US and Iran, who do not have formal diplomatic ties. A senior Biden administration official said the deal “has not changed our relationship with Iran in any way,” noting the US would still work to hold Iran accountable for its human rights abuses and to constrain its nuclear program.

Under the agreement, $6 billion in Iranian funds that had been held in restricted accounts in South Korea were transferred to restricted accounts in banks in Qatar – and the money is to be used by Tehran only for humanitarian purchases.

The agreement also involves the release of five Iranians in US custody.

Two of the five had served a majority of their sentences; the other three were awaiting trial and had not yet been convicted, a US official noted.

The Biden administration has been engaged in negotiations to bring detained Americans back to the US from Iran “since the earliest weeks" of its term, a top official said Monday.

The Americans, who had been designated by the US as wrongfully detained, were freed as part of a wider deal that included the US unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds and releasing five Iranians in US custody.

McGurk pushed back against the suggestion that the deal would incentivize other hostile governments to take US hostages.

“Iran really gains no benefit — there's no funds going into Iran, Iranian companies are not getting any money,” he said, referring to the monitoring of how the funds can be used by Tehran. “We have not changed, we have not lifted any sanctions, we have not waived any sanctions."

Looking forward, McGurk pledged, that the administration “will continue to work to deter, contain sanction, isolate Iran, and deter their aggressive activities,” while deploying “some of the most stringent due diligence and monitoring standards possible,” to ensure the released funds won’t be used to fund terror efforts. 

And he urged Americans to avoid Iran. 

“No Americans should travel to Iran, no American passport holders should travel to Iran,” he said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused President Joe Biden of “incentivizing Tehran’s bad behavior” over the deal that freed Americans held in that country.

McConnell said the Biden administration's "record of appeasement and squandered leverage has left Americans less secure.”

Republicans have been quick to criticize the deal, alleging that the transfer of the money is harming American credibility abroad and could be an incentive for US adversaries to wrongfully detain American citizens.

And last month, 26 Senate Republicans, led by presidential hopeful Sen. Tim Scott, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen criticizing the deal to release the Americans.

“The urgent question now is when the president will finally decide to change course. Because so far his administration's obsession with reviving a flawed nuclear deal actually suggests otherwise,” McConnell said.

Some background: In an interview on CNN, a senior White House official said any efforts to revive a nuclear deal with Iran were a “separate issue” to the agreement that led to the release of American and Iranian prisoners.

“This is not about trying to build some sort of rapprochement with Iran or to get us back into the Iran deal,” said John Kirby, the US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications.

The Iranian government now has access to $6 billion of its funds to be used for humanitarian purposes as a part of a wider deal that allowed five Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran to go free.

The money — which had been held in restricted accounts in South Korea before being transferred to different restricted accounts in Qatar via banks in Europe — is a key part of the deal. Iranian and US officials were notified by Qatar on Monday that the transfer had finished, according to a source briefed on details of the matter.

Republicans have been quick to criticize the deal, alleging that the transfer of the money is harming American credibility abroad and could be an incentive for US adversaries to wrongfully detain American citizens.

How it is supposed to be used: While the Iranian government claims it can use the money however it pleases, the Biden administration has stressed that the funds are narrowly limited to non-sanctionable purchases like food and medicine and that they will be subject to strict oversight.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in an interview last week that the Iranian government will decide how and where to spend the $6 billion in frozen assets. White House coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said that statement was “flat out wrong.”

Moreover, US officials have made clear that the funding, which is Iran’s, not from US taxpayer dollars, is not under the control of the Iranian government.

Sources told CNN the funds came from oil sales that were allowed and placed into accounts set up under the Trump administration.

How the US says it will conduct oversight: Biden administration officials emphasized each transaction will be monitored by the US Treasury Department.

Learn more about the US oversight plans

The release on Monday of the Americans who were detained in Iran ends a years-long saga that included lengthy detentions in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, which is known for its long record of human rights abuses.

Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz and Siamak Namazi are among the five Americans whose release is part of a deal that included the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian funds from South Korea to Qatar and the release of five Iranians in US custody. Two additional Americans in the deal have not yet been publicly identified.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said the country does not recognize dual citizenship and that it “routinely harasses citizens and dual nationals with trumped up national security charges.”

Here's what we know about them:

Emad Shargi is a businessman who was first arrested in 2018 while working for a technology investment company.

He spent eight months in jail and was released on bail but had a travel ban. In November 2020, he was sentenced to 10 years in jail by a Revolutionary Court for espionage charges.

Morad Tahbaz is an environmentalist who was also first arrested in 2018.

He is a US, UK and Iranian citizen who was arrested on allegations of espionage while on a trip to Iran. Prior to his arrest, both he and his wife had been blocked by an exit ban from leaving the country. In November 2019, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He co-founded the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation.

Tara Tahbaz, his daughter, told CNN that her father had cancer and had “gone through several medical conditions while he’s incarcerated,” including having Covid-19 three times.

Siamak Namazi was Iran’s longest-held Iranian-American prisoner. He had been detained since 2015.

He was the first US citizen reported to have been detained in Iran since the announcement of an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. His father, Baquer, was also imprisoned in 2016 but was released in order to receive medical treatment in October 2022.

Namazi was arrested when he was on a business trip to Iran in what the UN has described as an “arbitrary detention.” The Dubai-based businessman was charged with having “relations with a hostile state,” referring to the US. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Two Iranian prisoners who were released by the United States landed in Tehran on Monday, Iran's state-affiliated Press TV reported.  

The two people arrived in Doha earlier on Monday from the United States.

Out of the five Iranian prisoners freed by the US, two will remain in the US while one will travel to a third country, Iranian foreign minister spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a press conference earlier Monday.