An Iranian-American doctor Majid Taheri has returned to Iran, after a swap deal between Tehran and Washington that resulted in the release of a US Navy veteran detained in Iran. The doctor was welcomed at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport, where he was welcomed by Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi-Ansari.
Taheri, who was detained in the US for 16 weeks, was the second scientist to have returned to Iran from the United States in the past week after Sirous Asgari flew home on Wednesday. A slight thaw in US-Iranian enmity led the United States to allow Majid Taheri to travel to Iran.
Taheri was released in exchange for the release of US Navy veteran Michael White, who was detained by Iran.
Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi-Ansari.He said he had been punished by the United States for sending material to Iran to help a research group that was making vaccines. Taheri, detained in the United States for 16 months for violating U.S. sanctions, was freed on June 4 as Iran released
White had been sentenced to 13 years in 2019 for insulting Iran's supreme leader and posting private information online.
“I hope to see the release of (other Iranians imprisoned abroad) in the near future,” Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi-Ansari said, adding his ministry would do its best to achieve this.
Taheri said, “I thank the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and dear officials, including Mr Zarif, who worked hard, and other officials who took months to help release me, as an Iranian physician accused of circumventing US sanctions on medicine.”
Taheri had been accused of violating US sanctions by sending a technical item to Iran and in December pleaded guilty to charges he violated financial reporting requirements by depositing $277,344 at a bank, repeatedly showing up with loose cash, according to court documents. According to Taheri's lawyer, he will visit his family and seek medical treatment in Iran before returning to the US.
The prisoner swap is a bright spot in US-Iran relations that escalated after President Donald Trump exited the nuclear deal between the two nations in 2017 and imposed sanctions on Iran. The two sides were on the brink of direct conflict for the second time in less than a year in January, when Trump ordered an airstrike that killed one of Iran’s top generals, Qasem Soliemani.
The two nations, in December 2019, worked on a prisoner exchange in which Iran freed US citizen Xiyue Wang, who had been held for three years on spying charges, and the United States freed Iranian Massoud Soleimani, who faced charges of violating US sanctions on Iran.