US agrees to release $6bn in Iran funds as part of deal to free detained Americans

The Biden administration has issued a waiver to allow the transfer of $6bn in frozen Iranian funds from South Korea to Qatar as part of a deal to free five Americans detained in Iran.

The deal is also reported to involve the freeing of five Iranian citizens imprisoned in the US, mostly for sanctions-busting offenses.

The waiver allowing international banks to transfer the Iranian funds was signed by the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, late last week, and Congress was informed on Monday.

Under the deal, the money will be sent to Qatar’s central bank, from where it can be disbursed for the purchase of humanitarian goods for Iran.

As part of the preparation for the deal, four of the US nationals held by Iran were transferred from jail to house arrest last month. The fifth detainee was already under house arrest.

The waiver was first reported by the Associated Press and Reuters. The state department has not responded to a request for comment.

The deal with Iran is likely to be controversial in the US at a time when Iran is arming Russia in support of its invasion of Ukraine, supplying large quantities of drones that are being used to bomb civilian targets, and there is no agreement on the scope of Iran’s nuclear programme.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, also complained there was decreasing pressure on Iran’s over its lack of cooperation with the agency.

Addressing the IAEA board of governors on Monday, Grossi said there had been no progress in talks with Tehran over its removal of IAEA monitoring equipment from sensitive sites, and the failure to explain the discovery of highly enriched uranium particles by IAEA inspectors.

Grossi described a “decrease in interest” among IAEA member states, without naming them.

“There is a certain routinisation of what is going on there, and I am concerned about this, because the issues are as valid today as they were before,” he told reporters on the first day of the board of governors’ meeting in Vienna.