A senior White House official on Sunday denied reports from Tehran that an agreement had been reached with Iran for the release of four Americans detained there.
“I can tell you, unfortunately, that report is untrue,” White House chief of staff Ron Klain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Klain’s comments followed reports on Iranian state television, quoting “an informed source,” that the US side had agreed to release $7 billion in frozen Iranian funds and free four Iranians accused of bypassing sanctions in exchange for the release of four Americans accused of spying.
State TV also reported that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national who has been held in the country since 2016, was being freed after “payment of military debt.”
But British officials played down the report, with the foreign office saying discussions were “ongoing.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was initially detained while on holiday in Iran in 2016 when she was working as a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency, and data firm’s philanthropic wing.
