The Americans released included Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent, Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Idaho, Amir Hekmati, a former Marine from Flint, Michigan, and Nosratollah Khosravi, state television said.
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Student Matthew Trevithick was also released as part of a separate agreement.
The seven Iranians freed by the United States are Nader Modanlou, Baharam Mechanic, Khosrow Afghahi, Arash Ghahreman, Tooraj Faridi, Nima Golestaneh, and Ali Saboonchi, according to IRNA and the state broadcaster.
The United States also agreed to drop charges against 14 other Iranians whose extradition to the United States seemed unlikely, a USA official said.
Four Iranian-Americans, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, have been freed in Iran in a prisoner swap deal, Iranian and U.S. officials said.
Washington Post reporter Rezaian, 39, was arrested in July 2014 along with three other journalists, including his wife Yeganeh Salehi.
Khosravi’s case has received little publicity and not much is known of his back story other than Iranian reports that he is a business man. Hekmati was charged and convicted of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency while visiting his grandmother in 2011.
There was no word Saturday whether negotiations between Iran and the United States involved Robert Levinson, a former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Iran has held since 2007.
“I believe he’s still on Iranian soil”, she said.
In Washington, a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed “that our detained USA citizens have been released and that those who wished to depart Iran have left”, but gave no further information.
The prisoner release was not the first U.S.-Iranian deal before the certification that Iran was implementing the nuclear deal.
As a result, some global economic sanctions against Iran were lifted.
She added, “I will continue to pray for my husband’s release and advocate for him as he suffers in an Iranian prison for his Christian faith”.
The formal implementation of the nuclear deal was due to be announced in Vienna on Saturday, giving Iran access to over $100 billion in assets frozen overseas in exchange for steps it has taken to curb its nuclear program. In return, the White House promised to pardon seven Iranians who were accused of violating US sanctions against the Middle East power.
A plane carrying at least three of the four Americans freed by Iran as part of a prisoner swap has taken off, three of the men’s families said in Sunday statements. “I mean, he makes bad deals and he seems to become an expert at making bad deals with the Iranians”, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said from the campaign trail in Iowa. He had been sentenced to eight years in prison.
“We are relieved that this 545-day nightmare for Jason and his family is finally over”.
Rezaian is a dual Iran-U.S. citizen convicted of espionage by Iran in a closed-door trial a year ago.
Under the agreement, the Vienna-based IAEA is tasked with verifying that Iran has met the terms of the deal – including the mothballing of most of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges, the shipment of enriched-uranium stockpiles out of the country and the disabling its Arak nuclear reactor, capable of yielding plutonium.
Hekmati’s lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, said Hekmati called him earlier Saturday from prison. He went immediately into a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the Coburg Palace Hotel, the scene of months-long final negotiations last summer that led to the deal between Iran and the world powers.
Naghmeh says she has been receiving messages from congressmen and senators who have been so supportive of his release and return to the U.S. She even said she chatted with one of her very good friends, Senator Ted Cruz, over the phone Saturday morning.
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Trevithick has left Iran, administration officials said.
