Five Americans who have been imprisoned in Iran are expected to be released Monday, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said, as part of a wider deal with the United States that includes the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian funds.
The US government has designated all five Americans as being wrongfully detained.
Speaking at a press conference which was shown on state-affiliated Press TV on Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the release “will hopefully be completed” alongside the other elements of the deal.
The detainees have arrived at an airport in Tehran and are due to be flown on a Qatari jet to Doha, a source briefed on details of the matter told CNN on Monday afternoon local time.
The release of the Americans would bring to an end a years-long nightmare for those who had been detained. Three of those who are believed to be part of the deal – Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and Siamak Namazi – have all been imprisoned for more than five years. Namazi has been detained since 2015. The identities of the other two Americans are not publicly known.
Under the agreement between the US and Iran, $6 billion in Iranian funds that had been held in restricted accounts in South Korea would be transferred to restricted accounts in banks in Qatar. Iranian and US officials have been notified by Qatar that the money has been transferred from Switzerland to bank accounts in Qatar, according to a source briefed on details of the matter.
Sources told CNN the funds came from oil sales that were allowed and placed into accounts set up under the Trump administration. Biden administration officials have stressed that the funds that have been transferred to the accounts in Qatar will only be able to be used by Iran for humanitarian purchases and each transaction will be monitored by the US Treasury Department...
Probably the best deal that could've been made. Past time to get them home.
... After taking over the reins of the longest-running show in television history, ["Meet the Press" host Kristen] Welker announced that her debut episode would feature an interview with … that guy. Him. The semi-ambulant tub of walrus butter who has never—not for one moment in the past 77 years—had anything interesting, coherent, or remotely truthful to say.
At first I thought, well, maybe she’ll utterly savage him. But even then her decision would be irresponsible, because it’s literally impossible to responsibly interview Trump. You’d have to fact-check him in real time, and if you did that, there’d be 10 times more fact-check than interview. Didn’t we learn that earlier this year from CNN’s ill-advised Trump town hall?
My hopes for a thorough dressing-down quickly faded, however, when the teaser clips started trickling in. For instance, there was this preview clip from NBCNews.com, which shows Trump bending Welker’s ear during a leisurely summer stroll as Welker demurely smiles and generally behaves as if she’s not standing next to a feral criminal who violently attempted to end American democracy. Yup, I pretty much knew this interview would suck from the drop when I didn’t see her wheeling him across the golf course on a dolly as Walt Nauta fed him Reese’s Pieces through the breathing hole in his ranch sauce-festooned Hannibal Lecter mask.
Then she asked him a question about the ringing endorsement he recently got from Vladimir Putin and—surprise, surprise—he lied through his
teethKari Lake-esque filter of billowing brown meat sweats. For instance, Welker let him get away with saying nobody was tougher on Russia than he was. It’s a lie Trump repeats continually, even though Putin moved mountains to try to get him reelected and Trump planned to pull us out of NATO in his second term—which would have been the biggest gift Putin ever received. And Welker just sat there nodding her head...
The obscene normalization of the convicted sexual assaulter, twice-impeached malignant narcissist facing 91 felony charges in four jurisdictions continues. Christiane Amanpour's plea to "be truthful, not neutral" has fallen on Welker's/ NBC's deaf ears. More commentary later.
... On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released data showing that the rate of child poverty more than doubled to 12.4 percent in 2022, from a record low of 5.2 percent the previous year. Five million kids fell into poverty.
This wasn’t the fault of parents. Congress did it by refusing to reauthorize the payments of up to $300 per child each month under President Biden’s expanded child tax credit. The expiration of other benefits provided during the pandemic made things worse.
On the same day, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had an important announcement to make. In a more humane world, he might have addressed this dramatic turnaround in the lives of children. You’d think that a party committed to rolling back abortion rights would want to demonstrate that its dedication to life extends to children after they are born.
But McCarthy had something else on his mind: impeaching Biden. More precisely, he announced a vague impeachment inquiry without providing any evidence of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that are the Constitution’s standard for such a momentous action. He offered little about how this inquiry would move forward...
As the writer notes, the "pro-life party" always wants you to know how deeply it cares about human life -- that is, until that life is out of the womb. Then, you're on your own, baby (literally). What a collection of hypocrites, racists, and scoundrels.
