House Democrats Express Concerns About Looming Deal With Iran

In response to a question about earlier remarks by the country’s foreign ministry spokesman, who had expressed Iran’s readiness for prisoner swaps as part of the agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, he did not rule out such a possibility. 

“We have a duty to follow up on the problems of our citizens anywhere in the world and support them, but relations between countries can be very effective in this field. The level of relationships and the quality of relationships are effective in this field,” he said.

He noted that such exchanges work much more easily with Islamic countries and neighboring countries, especially with countries with whom Tehran has agreements in this regard, but “these relations and contracts do not exist with a country like the United States, and things must be done diplomatically.”

Earlier in the month, foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Iran is ready for swift agreements for prisoner swaps with the US, regardless of the result of talks to restore the JCPOA.

A few days earlier, the spokesman for the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Relations Committee Mahmoud Abbaszadeh Meshkini said, "I don't know specifically whether there is going to be an exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States, but in international relations this is customary and it is not unusual for some prisoners to be exchanged between the two countries.”

According to a report by BBC, Khatami – then a minister -- held a meeting with two Pakistani-British Islamic scholars, Kalim Siddiqui and Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, just hours before Khomeini issued the fatwa, a formal proclamation that called for the murder of Rushdie. Before the February 1989 decree, Iran had largely ignored the Satanic Verses, the controversial book that brought about 30 years of death threats for the novelist. 

The two Sunni clerics had arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport to get home to the UK after attending a conference in the Iranian capital to mark a decade since the country's Islamic Revolution. Inside the airport, they bumped into Khatami -- who asked to have a private word with Kalim. "They went to a corner and chatted," Ghayasuddin later explained in the BBC's 2009 documentary, recounting that "He (Khatami) was asking my view about Salman Rushdie - and I told him, 'You know, something drastic has to happen.'"

Khatami then met with Khomeini, and a few hours later the fatwa was issued, not only against Rushdie but also its publishers, editors and translators, reportedly without Khomeini even reading the novel. "I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay" it read. 

Kalim later said he believed he may have been "partially responsible" for the fatwa. In 2019, Ed Husain, a writer on religion and extremism, said that Khomeini had not been minded to do anything about Rushdie; it had been the British imam who had urged the autocratic political and religious leader that he "must do something for the Muslims".

Industry, Mines and Trade Minister Reza Fatemi Amin said on Monday that the regulations for using cryptocurrencies instead of dollar and euro was finalized by the administration on Sunday. 

"All the issues related to crypto-assets, including how to provide fuel and energy, and how to assign and grant licenses were devised," he added. 

The use of cryptocurrencies in imports is one of the ways to circumvent sanctions because cryptocurrencies are not traded through normal channels such as banks and it is very difficult to track them.

Earlier in the month, Iran made its first official import cryptocurrency order, worth $10 million, as a test run for allowing the country to trade through digital assets that bypass the dollar-dominated global financial system and to trade with other countries similarly embargoed by US sanctions, such as Russia. 

"By the end of September, the use of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts will be widely used in foreign trade with target countries," said Alireza Peymanpak, a deputy Iranian trade minister who leads Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO). 

Iran has a complex relationship with cryptocurrencies, which have helped hide various kinds of illicit trades banned by US and other European sanctions but creating them is highly energy-intensive. In 2019, Iran’s central bank banned trading of cryptocurrencies inside the country but the government allowed the use of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to pay for imports.

According to Swedish newspaper Expressen, the Stockholm District Court began Thursday planning for a meeting with the prosecutors and defense attorneys for the upcoming trial.

The details of the case against them are not very transparent as prosecutors Per Lindqvist and Mats Ljungqvist have commented very little on the substance of the allegations. Formal charges against the two are expected in the coming months and their trial will not be open to the public. Both brothers’ lawyers have so far maintained that their clients are innocent.

Both brothers, who were born in Iran but came to Sweden as children in 1994, are accused of spying activity from March of 2011 until their arrest in September and November of last year, and are currently kept in strict isolation at the Kronoberg prison. 

The Swedish paper did not mention their names but earlier reports at the time of their arrest disclosed their identities as Peyman Kia, now 42 years old, and his brother Payam, who is 35 years old.

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The older brother of the pair is said to have worked as an investigator and spent time in the Security Police (SÄPO) as well as working for military intelligence and the Office for Special Acquisition (KSI), one of Sweden’s most secretive intelligence agencies. The younger brother has also worked for SÄPO for a brief period. 

Tensions are relatively high between Iran and Sweden over a Swedish court’s sentencing of former Iranian jailor Hamid Nouri to life imprisonment over executions of political prisoners in 1988.

In a tweet on Sunday, Nour News, a website affiliated with the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, said that “the precise examination of US's responses to Iran's modified pivots regarding the proposal of the European Union coordinator, is still ongoing at expert levels, and this process will continue at least until the end of this week.”

The Iranian week ends on Friday, September 2.

Meanwhile, Iran's hardline Kayhan Daily, affiliated with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office, has called on the government to leave the negotiations and proceed without reviving the landmark accord. 

“The path taken in these years has proven that with negotiations [Iran] cannot remove the sanctions, and with more negotiations only the scope of [other side’s] the demands will become wider,” the newspaper said.

The article noted that the capabilities of the Iranian government and the regional and global developments have provided the administration of Ebrahim Raisi with a good opportunity to correct the deviated path of the nuclear talks.

Removal of sanctions through negotiations is a bait that the US foreign policy officials have set on the hook, and the government can forget this bait and spend all its focus and energy on neutralizing the effects of the sanctions as it has been doing during the past year, the daily underlined. 

Unconfirmed parts of the US response to Iran have been leaked in Tehran, showing Washington’s rejection of three key Iranian demands.