After several years of detention, two prisoners, one Iranian, imprisoned in the United States, and the other American, detained in Iran, have been released, US President Donald Trump said on Saturday. the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
"Delighted that Professor Massoud Soleimani and Mr. Xiyue Wang will be reuniting with their families soon," Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter. The latter also shared photos showing him in the company of Massoud Soleimani on a plane.
Going home pic.twitter.com/HZHPDc20aj
- Javad Zarif (@JZarif) December 7, 2019US President Donald Trump, for his part, reported in a release of the release of Xiyue Wang. "After being detained for more than three years in Iran, Xiyue Wang is on his way to the United States," he said. The US president, however, did not mention the simultaneous release of Massoud Soleimani.
Diplomatic relations stalled for almost forty years
Mohammad Javad Zarif sent "a big thank you to all those involved, especially the Swiss government," who represent US interests in Tehran in the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries since 1980.
It is besides in Switzerland, with Iranian officials, that Massoud Soleimani has been released, said Iran's state agency Irna.
Massoud Soleimani, a professor at Tarbiat Moddares University in Tehran and a specialist in stem cells, traveled to the United States on 22 October 2018 for research work and was detained there without trial, according to Irna.
Xiyue Wang, a Sino-US researcher, is serving a 10-year prison sentence for spying in Iran. A PhD student in history at Princeton University in the United States, he was conducting research on the Qajar dynasty in Iran, where he was imprisoned in August 2016.
Relations between Iran and the United States have deteriorated badly since May 2018 when US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the international nuclear deal on Iran, before unilaterally reinstating economic sanctions against Tehran.