Many have lived under sanctions or wartime austerity for so long that they have no clear expectations about what the future might hold.
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Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian is free from Iranian custody and on the way to a USA military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
In addition, the US will drop Interpol “red notices” – essentially arrest warrants – on 14 Iranian fugitives it has sought, officials said.
-By Tom Strong in Washington.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had scaled back its nuclear programme.
Obama said the released Iranians weren’t charged with terrorism.
His family released a statement thanking supporters for standing with the family since his arrest. Iranian prosecutors had accused him of espionage, charges the Post had dismissed as “absurd”. He said the start of his presidency would be like that of Ronald Reagan in 1981, when Iran released hostages taken at the American embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Update, 9:35 a.m.: The Associated Press reports that a US official has confirmed the identities of three American detainees to be released, including Saeed Abdini. From Geneva, they are to be flown to a USA air base in Germany.
The man who remained in Iran is Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, whose imprisonment has not previously been reported on and about whom little is known.
Ali Saboonchi of Parkville, Maryland, was one of seven Iranians who were released Saturday in a negotiated exchange between the two countries.
However, the attorney for Bahram Mechanich, one of the seven, told CNN his client was pardoned along with two others – Tooraj Faridi and Khosro Afghahi – but their release awaits the Americans’ departure from Iran.
The officials said they would ensure the Americans were in good health and reunited with their families, but declined to discuss further logistics of the transfer because of privacy concerns.
“They were jumping, dancing”, she said. The fifth U.S. national was released under a separate U.S./Iran deal.
Kerry said the nuclear agreement provided the key impetus.
Ban was speaking in Dubai at the opening of an event about improving the delivery of global humanitarian aid.
It was finalised on the same day that the nuclear deal was implemented and that the nuclear-related sanctions on Iran were lifted.
Critics of Obama’s Iran policy at home and overseas pounced on the details of the prisoner exchange and the new economic opportunities being afforded Tehran while it still supports Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
“All the parties are happy with the exception of the Zionists and the warmongers”, he said.
But the deal bogged down in Tehran and never went through.
The deal came after more than a year of secret negotiations, the officials said.
The exports are nevertheless likely to jump now that the United States, European Union and United Nations have scrapped the sanctions in return for Tehran complying with the deal to curb its nuclear ambitions, which Tehran says were peaceful.
The $75 billion budget, unveiled Sunday, is about 4.2 percent higher than the previous year’s budget of $72 billion.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that without Israel’s leadership in promoting the sanctions on Iran, the country would have already been a nuclear power. “It was part of the agreement, it was clearly stated”.
Iranians have “reached out to the world in a sign of friendliness, and leaving behind the enmities, suspicions and plots, have opened a new chapter in the relations of Iran with the world”, he said.
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There had been expectations that they would leave on Saturday, while the final round of talks on sanctions were taking place.
