The five prisoners, who were freed by Iran in a $6 billion deal, have landed back in the US and were greeted by their families in an emotional reunion.
Siamak Namazi, 51, Emad Sharqi, 59, and Morad Tahbaz, 67, as well as two others, have officially stepped foot back into the US Monday after landing at Dulles Airport in Virginia.
The two other Americans have asked to remain anonymous.
Namazi appeared overwhelmed as he stepped off the Qatari jet after arriving in the Southern state, taking a step back in shock as a smile spread across his face. After departing the plane, the former prisoner rushed to hug a relative, the pair clinging to each other in a sweet moment after being separated for eight years.
The oil executive, who has dual citizenship in the US and Iran, said he is looking forward to getting “reacquainted with liberty” and to seeing “foliage instead of walls and wardens” and to be able to “lay back on the grass, with the warm sun on my face,” according to ABC News.
Sharqi was greeted by two women who excitedly ran up to him, one waving a small American flag. He gripped the women tightly in his grasp, kissing their foreheads in a way of greeting.
The prisoners and US officials also posed for a group photo in the Davison Army Airfield, all wearing bright smiles as they celebrated the five’s return home.
“Husbands and wives, fathers and children, grandparents can hug each other again,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said at a press conference in New York.
The former hostages were taken to a military facility in Virginia and given access to mental and medical care before being allowed to reunite with their families, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told GMA.
All of them were said to be in “relatively good health.”
The three men were being held on espionage charges, which they and the US denied.
“Today, five innocent Americans who were imprisoned in Iran are finally coming home,” President Biden said.
In addition, Tahbaz’s wife and Namazi’s mother were also granted the right to leave Iran, which they had previously been denied.
In exchange, the US granted clemency to five Iranians in the US in a Qatar-mediated decision. The deal unlocked $6 billion in assets in Iranian oil revenue that were tied up with US sanctions.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said the exchange could be a “step in the direction of humanitarian action between us and America.”
“It can definitely help in building trust,” he said in New York at a press conference.
The Americans were released from the Qatari plane after the funds – that had been blocked in South Korea – were wired, via Switzerland, to banks in Doha, Qatar, where they were taken before continuing to their home countries.
After the transfer was confirmed, the five US prisoners plus two relatives took off on a Qatari plane from Tehran at the same time as two of the five Iranian detainees landed in Doha on their way home.
Two returned home to Iran. Mehrdad Ansari, who was sentenced to 63 months in prison in 2021 for obtaining equipment that could be used in missiles; and Reza Sarhangpour Kafrani, who was also charged in 2021 for unlawfully exporting laboratory equipment to his home country.
Three Iranians chose not to go to Iran.
The deal removes a point of friction between the United States, which brands Tehran a sponsor of terrorism, and Iran, which calls Washington the “Great Satan.”
But it is unclear whether it will bring the two adversaries, which have been at odds for 40 years, closer on any other issues, such as Iran’s nuclear program and its backing for regional militias or the US military presence in the Gulf and US sanctions.
Namazi was detained in 2015 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a “collaboration with a hostile government” conviction for having ties to the US.
Shargi, a businessman, was detained in 2018 and released in 2019 before he was arrested again in 2020 and was given a 10-year sentence for espionage.
Tahbaz, a conservationist, was also arrested in 2018 and given a 10-year sentence.