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U.S. navy officers informed CBS News that Iran and its militias could also be planning to behave towards a U.S. embassy or navy base within the area. Iran has vowed revenge for the U.S. airstrike that killed General Qassem Soleimani a yr in the past.
With rigidity mounting, CBS News spoke to Xiyue Wang, an American lately launched from an Iranian jail after spending three and half years there. His son was only a toddler when Xiyue was imprisoned in Iran on fabricated expenses of espionage. He maintains that he is only a scholar and was focused as a result of he is American.
Xiyue stated his interrogator “very explicitly” informed him that they had imprisoned him in hopes that the U.S. would make a deal.
“The Ministry of Intelligence interrogator told me clearly that they need me as a spy to convict me so that they can do a deal with the United States,” he stated.
“You’re not the first American and you can be assured that you’re not the last American to be in Iranian jail,” the interrogator stated, in line with Xiyue.
In 2019, President Trump swapped a jailed Iranian scientist for Xiyue.
“They didn’t get everything they had hoped for,” Xiyue stated, including that the Iranians wished cash and for the U.S. to unfreeze their property.
At least three different Americans are nonetheless being held, one in every of which Xiyue stated he met in jail.
President-elect Biden desires to check out diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, however skilled Suzanne Maloney says that should not be the one difficulty. The Biden crew has provided to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, which might carry sanctions value billions.
“There needs to be negotiations around the nuclear issue. But that doesn’t mean subordinating the other sets of concerns, particularly the lives of Americans who are held in Iranian prisons,” stated Maloney, the director of the overseas coverage program on the Brookings Institution.
Xiyue is urging Mr. Biden to make the discharge of Americans held hostage his first precedence.
“Without their return: no deal with Iran,” he stated.
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