In exchange, the United States will release five Iranian citizens either sentenced or with trials pending. And South Korea will transfer to banks in Qatar $6 billion owed to Iran for the purchase of crude oil. Some critics call this transaction a ransom payment. The reality, as usual, is far more complex.
To unpack the details of the deal, I spoke with Brett McGurk, the National Security Council’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa — and the official who conducted the secret negotiations that led to my own release in 2016. What follows has been lightly edited for length.
Jason Rezaian: How did the Biden administration weigh its decision to make a deal with Iran for the release of the hostages?
Brett McGurk: Absent an arrangement to bring these people home, they would languish in one of the world’s worst prisons for many years to come. Some of our citizens had a potential death sentence hanging over them. All of them are now safely out of Iran.
We recognize there will be criticism of the deal, but the president ultimately needs to weigh the terms available through diplomacy, against leaving American citizens for years, or even decades, in Evin Prison. In this case, the president made the hard decision to move ahead.
The critics bristle at the thought of Iran being paid to release hostages, even if that money is coming from South Korea.
There is a lot of false information out there. These are funds that South Korea deposited into Iranian accounts during past administrations for the purchase of Iranian oil. Under U.S. sanctions regulations, these funds have been legally available for certain forms of bilateral and humanitarian trade.
These are not frozen funds. Iran spent heavily from similar accounts — in China, Turkey, India — under the last administration. The funds in South Korea were not spent for reasons specific to South Korea. What we have agreed to do as part of this deal is to transfer the funds from South Korea to a bank in Qatar. And under terms that provide confidence, the funds will be spent only on a limited category of humanitarian trade: food, medicine and agricultural products. That’s it.
The funds are subject to more legal restrictions now than when they were in South Korea. And for any transactions, funds are used to pay vendors for the humanitarian goods. No funds whatsoever are going into Iran.
These details matter. We took time to get the details right.
Some of the loudest critics of this deal claim the Trump administration was able to get Iran to release U.S. citizens without offering concessions.
Dual citizen cases are the most difficult cases. There were no dual citizens released during the last administration. The deal today involves five dual citizens and two of their family members. As for the American citizens that were released in the last administration, there were trades made — and there were trades made for pretty significant individuals that Iran wanted back and returned to Iran. All that was happening while Iran was benefiting from funds in accounts that are nearly identical to those we just moved to Doha and that we are placing under even stricter terms than existed years ago.
I’m not criticizing the last administration. These are hard decisions for any president. But let’s be honest about the facts.
Critics believe deals like these embolden Iran, rather than deterring its aggression in the region.
When we entered office, Americans were under fire in Iraq and Syria nearly every week. You may recall that three months before the election, the former secretary of state threatened to close down our embassy in Baghdad. Shortly thereafter, the embassy suffered its largest rocket attack in nearly a decade.
The notion that Iran was deterred before President Biden entered office is baseless. President Biden very early ordered airstrikes against the groups attacking our troops. This past March, after a long period with no attacks we tragically saw the first American killed in an Iranian-sponsored attack, in Syria. The president immediately ordered an attack against a facility used by the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps) in Syria. There have been no attacks since. And we are fully prepared to respond, should that change.
Separately, we have issued about 30 rounds of new sanctions in the last year alone, increased our military presence in the gulf, and have built international coalitions to isolate Iran in international forums, removing Tehran from the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, for example.
Given the timing of the deal around the anniversary of the killing Mahsa Amini and the protests, some critics suspect that this prisoner deals is part of a larger reopening of discussions with Iran on other issues. Is that true?
This deal was not linked to nuclear diplomacy. It was negotiated separately, in Doha. At the same time, we have told the Iranians in no uncertain terms that diplomacy cannot meaningfully advance if American citizens are being wrongfully detained.
Similarly, if Iran is escalating conflicts in the region, or supplying drones to Russia for its war on the Ukrainian people, this makes the prospect for meaningful diplomacy hard to envision. We have made that clear to Iran repeatedly and consistently. The nuclear talks to date have stalled, and while we will not shut the door to diplomacy altogether, we are also prepared for any and all potential contingencies with respect to Iran’s nuclear program.
This deal does not change our relationship with Iran. Iran is an adversary and a state sponsor of terrorism. We will hold them accountable wherever possible. This is why the president spoke out on the anniversary of Mahsa’s death, and we rolled out 30 new sanctions designations.
Are you hopeful that we’ll see a day that Iran stops taking hostages like this?
No. Not under the current system.
We will do our best to deter this outrageous conduct of detaining foreign nationals. Today, we are issuing new sanctions under the Levinson Act, both against the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and against Iran’s former president [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. You’re going to see those kinds of efforts continue.
But the only way to ensure you are not taken into custody in Iran is by never traveling to Iran. Do not go there for any reason. We really cannot be clearer on this. We recognize people have families in Iran or other reasons to visit. But don’t do it. We are prepared to work with Congress on ways to further deter any American passport holder from traveling there.
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