Iran-US prisoner swap: Five detained Americans set to be freed Monday

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : "Five imprisoned citizens who were in Iran will be given to the U.S. side reciprocally, based on their will.
54% : Four American captives, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, flew home from Iran at the time, and several Iranians in the U.S. won their freedom.
51% : However, a Qatar Airways Airbus A320 landed on Monday morning at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran, where previous prisoner releases have taken place, according to flight-tracking data analyzed by the AP.
49% : That money was then sent to Qatar, an interlocutor between Tehran and Washington in the negotiations.
44% : Iran and the United States will exchange prisoners on Monday after some $6 billion once frozen in South Korea reached Qatar, a key element of the planned swap, officials said.
44% : However, the swap won't mean that tensions have been lowered between the U.S. and Iran, which now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
44% : Their most recent major exchange happened in 2016, when Iran came to a deal with world powers to restrict its nuclear program in return for an easing of sanctions.
42% : Iranian government officials have largely concurred with that explanation, though some hard-liners have insisted, without providing evidence, that there would be no restrictions on how Tehran spends the money.
42% : That same day, President Barack Obama's administration airlifted $400 million in cash to Tehran.
40% : The announcement by Kanaani comes weeks after Iran said that five Iranian-Americans are now under house arrest as part of a confidence-building move while Seoul allowed the frozen assets, held in South Korean won, to be converted into euros.
40% : While the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog has warned that Iran now has enough enriched uranium to produce "several" bombs, months more would likely be needed to build a weapon and potentially miniaturize it to put it on a missile -- if Iran decided to pursue one.
39% : But the advances in its program have led to fears of a wider regional conflagration as Israel, itself a nuclear power, has said it would not allow Tehran to develop the bomb.
36% : From the following year on, a series of attacks and ship seizures attributed to Iran have raised tensions.
35% : Iran and the U.S. have a history of prisoner swaps dating back to the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover and hostage crisis following the Islamic Revolution.
35% : The U.S. intelligence community has maintained its assessment that Iran is not pursuing an atomic bomb.
31% : The cash represents money South Korea owed Iran -- but had not yet paid -- for oil purchased before the Trump administration imposed sanctions on such transactions in 2019.
30% : The five prisoners Iran has said it seeks are mostly held over allegedly trying to export material to Iran.
29% : Iran has taken steps in recent months to settle some issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
28% : Iran has received international criticism over its targeting of people with dual citizenship.
21% : The deal has also already opened President Joe Biden to fresh criticism from Republicans and others who say that the administration is helping boost the Iranian economy at a time when Iran poses a growing threat to U.S. troops and Mideast allies.
18% : Iran also supplies Russia with the bomb-carrying drones Moscow uses to target sites in Ukraine in its war on Kyiv, which remains another major dispute between Tehran and Washington.___
13% : The West accuses Iran of using foreign prisoners as bargaining chips, an allegation Tehran rejects.

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