The US special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, told Reuters Sunday that an agreement to restore the Iran nuclear deal is unlikely to be reached if Americans detained in the Islamic Republic are not released.
Prisoner exchange deals with Iran have always been considered separate from nuclear deal negotiations. The US and Iran even agreed to a prisoner swap during the Trump administration.
“They’re separate and we’re pursuing both of them. But I will say it is very hard for us to imagine getting back into the nuclear deal while four innocent Americans are being held hostage by Iran,” he said.
“So even as we’re conducting talks with Iran indirectly on the nuclear file we are conducting, again indirectly, discussions with them to ensure the release of our hostages,” Malley added.
While he still insists the issues are separate, Malley’s comments suggest the Biden administration could use a failure to negotiate the release of the prisoners as an excuse not to lift sanctions on Iran and restore the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.
Indirect JCPOA negotiations between the US and Iran are still ongoing in Vienna. US officials have said some progress has been made but have also been warning time is running out on the talks.
Well, there you go. More guarantees that the JCPOA is dead as a door nail. Anyone who believed Joe “I’m a Zionist” Biden was going to rejoin the JCPOA was delusional. Hmmm, wonder what Ray McGovern thought about that?
“four innocent Americans are being held hostage by Iran” of course. Murder of a top Iranian general is nothing. Thousands of deaths of Iranian men, women and children because of the illegal sanctions are irrelevant. All Murkins are innocent and we are always right. Look at our generous help to the people of Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, and of course our real care for one Chinese woman tennis player and millions of Muslims in a part of China we have decided is too competitive for us.
The question is what these PARTICULAR individuals are accused of doing, or have done,or what judicial proceedings they have been allowed. Prisoners should be treated as individuals, and not based on their national origins
The point, I think, was our hypocrisy.
We may be guilty of hypocrisy,but it is still the duty of a country to assist its citizens when they are being unjustly imprisoned by foreign powers.Individuals should not be used as hostages.
You’re correct. Individuals should not be used as hostages. But they frequently are, and not just by Iran. Every once in a while the US and Iran will do a prisoner exchange, and it’s not obvious that the Iranians being held by the US are any more or less actual spies, etc. than the Americans held by the Iranians are.
For that matter, the Israeli regime has been known to trade Palestinian hostages for IDF hostages, or even for IDF corpses.
Well then, are the Palestinians in question people who deserve to be in jail for acts of violence,or people unjustly seized?
If they were abducted outside Israel in illegally occupied territory, the answer automatically defaults to the latter. Violence against invaders/occupiers isn’t a crime.
One person’s invader is another persons protector. Israelis on the West Bank is not a good idea.Stopping terrorists from attacking Israelis in pre 1967 Israel is just under any circumstances and by whatever means. Palestinians will not accept gong back to 1967 and sharing Jerusalem.They want to go back to 1888.Tel Aviv,a city built on sand dunes, is described as “Tel Arabia” on youtube.
If 11th hour demands are going to be made in negotiations, Iran should counter with agreeing to handing over those four “hostages” in return for the US handing over the man responsible for ordering General Soleimani’s assassination. MAGA.
The CIA said that the General was great in helping in the fight against ISIS.
By which of course you are referring to Mike Pompeo (plus assorted Neocons.)
I agree.
(But all this is clearly just sarcasm/silliness.)
And yet upon googling the assassination of said general all the headlines say Trump ordered it. Nary a single link telling us it was Pompeo.
Hahahahaha!
Google is in the bag along with the rest of big tech — and MSM — about the anti-Trump narrative. Google’s algorithm won’t show anything that doesn’t support the “Orange Hitler is responsible” narrative until twenty pages in, if ever. And the MSM is 100% about blaming Trump for the policies and acts of his Neocon handlers, (who are nevertheless now the darlings of the MSM). Trump long resisted the idea of assassinating Soleimani. Pompeo, author-and-executor of the Neocon “maximum pressure” foreign policy, had to beat Trump over the head to get him to do it.
Wars, let’s not argue with each other about this. I am as fervently anti-war as I know you are. You and I both know that the problem was not Trump, but rather the forces that led to Trump, who are now back, and fully enabled in the Mr. Potato-head administration.
C’mon man, Trump has been bragging about it ever since it happened.
I do know the problem wasn’t Trump, I just don’t want him back. I don’t want Biden either and I will vote for neither.
Okay, now we can agree. Indeed, Trump is taking credit for it. He would take credit for anything he thought would make him look good, and sadly, most people buy into the Zionist-sponsored, anti-Iranian narrative, which unsurprisingly holds that the assassination of Soleimani — demonized as “a terrorist” — was a good thing.
I don’t want Trump back either. I didn’t vote for him in 2020 because my red line was monster psychopath Pompeo. I would very much like to see the beginnings of a return to sanity, with a 2024 Dem/Rep contest between the likes of say Gabbard vs DeSantis. But that dream is far off. And we “have miles to go before [we] sleep…”
Peace, brother.
Will we release all of our hostages, too?
The question is, who is the USG holding?
And where.
“”while four innocent Americans are being held hostage by Iran””
what are their names? where is the media coverage of their distraught families?
where is uncle sam waving his fist in outrage?
right then. maybe quit making shit up.
There were those Americans “hiking” near the border a few years ago. Probably CIA. Was that them?
I think there are far more Iranians in American jails than Americans in Iranian.
Who,what where when.If an Iranian has committed some sort of crime,then they should be in jail.No one should be used as a pawn,however.
Another US stupid bluff…!
I think Iran has a lot of leverage here and their best move would be to agree to transport these Americans to a border checkpoint or somewhere along the Gulf coast and, upon receiving confirmation that Biden has signed an Executive Order lifting all sanctions, effective immediately, hand them right over. Maybe after that, the American delegation can stop behaving like pathetic whiny children and be serious people about the JCPOA. But of course, that assumes these American hostages are even real.