Iran’s president has said his government will decide how it will spend $6bn released by the United States under a prisoner exchange deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US has issued a sanctions waiver for international banks to transfer the billions in frozen Iranian funds – paving the way for the release of a British national and four Americans held in Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The assets will be transferred from South Korea to Qatar, which Iran will then be able to use for buying humanitarian goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in an exclusive interview with NBC News, Sky’s US partner network, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said: “This money belongs to the Islamic Republic of Iran and naturally we will decide, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will decide to spend wherever we need it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked by NBC News presenter Lester Holt, in Tehran, if the money will be used for more than humanitarian purposes, Mr Raisi replied: “Humanitarian means whatever the Iranian people need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This money will be budgeted for those needs and the needs of the Iranian people will be decided and determined by the Iranian government.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US secretary of state Antony Blinken signed off on the deal last week, but Congress was only informed on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four of those held in Iran were released from prison and placed under house arrest last month, according to US officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US-Iranian dual nationals include businessmen Siamak Namazi, 51, and Emad Shargi, 58, as well as environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, 67, who has British citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They had all been jailed at the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran on spying charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The identity of the fourth US citizen allowed out of prison has not been made public, while a fifth man was already under house arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The agreement also includes the release of five unnamed Iranian citizens held in the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran’s president has said his government will decide how it will spend $6bn released by the United States under a prisoner exchange deal. The US has issued a sanctions waiver for international banks to transfer the billions in frozen Iranian funds – paving the way for the release of a British national and four Americans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[3020,1932,1459,3019],"class_list":["post-7336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ebrahim-raisi","tag-iran","tag-president","tag-us-prisoner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7338,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336\/revisions\/7338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}