Qatar is \u201cso proud\u201d to have facilitated the return home this week of five US citizens that had been jailed in Iran, said Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Tuesday \u2013 his first time speaking in depth about Qatar\u2019s role in the episode. <\/p>\n
Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz and Siamak Namazi, along with two Americans who have not been publicly named, arrived Tuesday at a military airfield in Virginia after being flown out of Iran the previous day on a Qatari government jet. <\/p>\n
Asked by Amanpour if the deal could mark a rapprochement in US-Iranian relations, Al-Thani struck an optimistic note, saying, \u201cI cannot claim that this will lead to a nuclear deal, but it\u2019s going definitely to lead to a better environment.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened yesterday actually was a great building block for rebuilding the confidence between the two countries,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hope both countries are believing that this will lead to a better environment to go for an entire agreement on the nuclear issue, and any other outstanding issue,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The Qatar-mediated prisoner-release deal came amid a significant dialing back of tensions between Iran and the US in recent months. <\/p>\n
Attacks by Iran and its proxies on US interests in the Middle East have almost ceased, and Iran\u2019s oil exports have risen despite Western sanctions on its oil industry. Meanwhile, Iran\u2019s uranium enrichment under its nuclear program has reportedly slowed. <\/p>\n
Still, a senior Biden administration official said earlier this week that the prisoner deal \u201chas not changed our relationship with Iran in any way.\u201d Soon after the American prisoners took off from Iran, the Biden administration slapped new sanctions on the regime. <\/p>\n
In speeches before the UN General Assembly in New York earlier in the day, the Iranian and American leaders traded well-worn accusations before delegates gathered in the UN\u2019s General Assembly Hall. <\/p>\n
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi accused the US of \u201cfanning the flames of violence in Ukraine\u201d in his speech, and revisited former US President Donald Trump\u2019s 2018 decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), which he called \u201can official trampling upon (of) their commitments.\u201d <\/p>\n
To move forward, Raisi said, \u201cthe United States of America must explain transparently and demonstrate in a verifiable fashion that it does wish to reach a proper conclusion and show her commitment \u2013 choose a path, either JCPOA or not.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is time now for the United States to bring a cessation to traveling on the wrong path and choose the right side,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
In his own speech, US President Joe Biden mentioned only that the US is \u201cworking with our partners to address Iran\u2019s destabilizing activities that threaten regional and global security and remain steadfast in our commitment that Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Qatar is \u201cso proud\u201d to have facilitated the return home this week of five US citizens that had been jailed in Iran, said Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Tuesday \u2013 his first time speaking in depth about Qatar\u2019s role in the episode. Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz and Siamak Namazi, along with two <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}