NOURNEWS - A State Department spokesman told in a news conference on Tuesday in a surprising word about the exchange of American prisoners with Iranian hostages held in the United States: "We have done our best not to tie their freedom to a reciprocal return to JCPOA, because there is no guarantee that an agreement will be reached."
Ned Price added; "We have made it very clear to them that their release is our priority and that we will continue to negotiate on this issue regardless of the result for JCPOA."
The remarks of this American official are surprising because they are completely contrary to the behavior of the United States in this case.
Talks on the exchange of American prisoners with Iranians imprisoned in the United States under false pretenses, began long ago, with the two sides agreeing that the issue was irrelevant to the sanction's negotiations.
The Iranian negotiating teams in this case and the negotiations on lifting the sanctions were completely different, and the talks were conducted in an independent atmosphere.
During the talks, the two sides agreed on the terms and conditions of the agreement, and some Western media outlets even leaked the news.
However, while the American side acknowledged that the talks in this area, which are related to humanitarian considerations, should not have anything to do with the talks on lifting the sanctions, but after the agreement, it repeated all the humanitarian slogans that the US State Department spokesman recently repeated violating and refusing to implement the agreements that resulted in the release of prisoners on both sides.
The incident also made the British side very angry and upset, but due to Washington's strong influence on London, the British side also withdrew from the talks.
From the beginning of the new round of sanctions lifting negotiations, the United States thought that it could use the prisoner exchange lever as a card to gain concessions from Iran due to its pressure-based policy.
Therefore, in all stages of the negotiations, it tried directly and indirectly to link the agreements on the release of prisoners with the issues raised in the negotiations, but the Iranian negotiating team never allowed the two cases to be linked.
The United States seems to be desperate to use the prisoner exchange case to gain a foothold in the sanction's negotiations, and is now seeking to revive the old case by projecting to free itself from public pressure.
If the United States releases the documents on the release of prisoners, which are related to the past few months, it will be clear that the statements of the spokesman of the State Department are not true.
Apparently, the US government has forgotten and does not remember sending a message to Iran through several intermediary countries that it would not implement the prisoner exchange agreements without reaching an agreement in the Vienna talks and returning to the JCPOA.
Unfortunately, after the non-implementation of the prisoner exchange agreements by the United States, the country took several Iranians hostage, all of whom are university professors, and caused a deadlock in this case.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, as it has stated from the outset for humanitarian reasons, is still willing, after the release of new hostages taken by the United States, to discuss the exchange of other detainees without any connection to the case for lifting sanctions and within the framework of previous agreements. Follow up and get results.
The United States knows that several of our university professors have been taken hostage during the negotiations for illusory reasons, and without their release, we would not have reached any agreement on this issue.
We recommend that the United States refrain from such evasion of responsibility and end its self-indulgent psychological operations, otherwise it will publish its documents if there is a reason.
BY: Mohammad Ghaderi
NOURNEWS