ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The White House on Wednesday defended a planned deal to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue and the release of five Iranian citizens in exchange for the release of five Americans detained in Iran.
The exchange would see $6 billion of Iranian funds frozen in South Korea being released and moved to restricted accounts in Qatar, a US ally, where Washington would supervise the mechanism of how they are spent purely for humanitarian purposes, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday.
“I also want to be clear: This is not a payment of any kind. It is not a ransom,” Kirby said. “And we have not lifted a single one of our sanctions on Iran. Iran will be getting no sanctions relief.”
“It is not a blank check. They do not get to spend it any way they want. It is not $6 billion all at once. They will have to make a request for withdrawals for humanitarian purposes only,” he said, adding that there will be “sufficient oversight” to ensure proper usage of the funds in coordination with Qatar.
Kirby said that the main beneficiaries of the funds will be the Iranian people and not the government, as the latter will have no direct access to the money, to be used solely for humanitarian purposes such as food and medicine.
“If Iran tries to divert the funds, we will take action and we will lock them up again,” he stressed.
But Republican lawmakers and officials have condemned US President Joe Biden and his administration for the deal, saying the deal was instead a “ransom” and “sanctions relief” and that the funds will be used by Iran to facilitate its nuclear program.
“We are not going to allow Iran to ever achieve a nuclear weapons capability,” Kirby said in response to critics.
The detained US citizens to be returned home as part of the deal include Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz, and Emad Shargi, as well as two others who chose to have their identities concealed.
On Wednesday, Iranian state media reported that five Iranian citizens held in the US would be released in exchange for five Americans as part of the deal.
The prisoner deal has been a major point of contention in US-Iran talks, particularly since Washington under former president Donald Trump’s administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 and imposed biting sanctions on Tehran.
The JCPOA was signed between Britain, France, China, Germany, Russia, Iran, and the US in 2015, offering Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program to ensure it does not enrich enough uranium to develop a nuclear weapon.
“We are not able to and we are not focused on returning to the JCPOA at this time,” Kirby said, reiterating previous remarks from the Biden administration who labeled the deal as “dead.”
