Iran Reportedly Drops Its Prisoner Swap Plans With US

Last month, Tehran announced that a prisoner swap deal had been agreed with Washington although the US side denied it.

Iran has dropped its plans for a prisoner swap with the United States over Washington's "breaches" against efforts to release the detainees, an anonymous Iranian official told the Nour News agency, according to Reuters. 

"With the continuing Biden administration ... breaches, there is no incentive on Iran's part to continue this process and therefore the exchanges issue in its current form will be completely removed from its agenda," the official told the agency.

In July, Iran announced that it had agreed with the US on a prisoner swap deal but Washington denied it. Tehran described the US denial as "outrageous". Iran's top nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi accused Washington and London of holding prisoner exchange talks "hostage" after Tehran proposed to delay the nuclear talks until its new government comes into office in August.

Iran's Governor to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Kazem Gharib Abadi, and political deputy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, Abbas Araghchi, from left, leave the 'Grand Hotel Vienna' where closed-door nuclear talks take place in Vienna, Austria, Sunday, June 20, 2021.

© AP Photo / Florian Schroetter

According to Araghchi, the sides agreed on a humanitarian exchange, meaning that 10 prisoners on all sides could be released on 18 July if the US and the UK fulfilled their part of the deal. US State Department spokesman Ned Price rejected the remarks as "an outrageous effort to deflect blame from the current impasse", saying no deal had been agreed upon yet.