Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, has said that the process of wiring Iran’s unfrozen funds in South Korea to bank accounts in Qatar under a prisoner exchange deal with the US will compete next week.
Al-Thani made the remarks in a phone conversation on Thursday with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, according to Iran’s official news agency the IRNA.
Qatar has been a mediator in talks that led to a prisoner exchange deal between Iran and the United States that was made public on August 10.
The deal involves the release of five prisoners from each side as well as the unfreezing of some $6 billion worth of Iranian funds that had remained inaccessible since 2018 in two banks in South Korea because of US sanctions.
The process for transferring the funds took more than a month mainly because there was a daily cap on the amount of exchange possible for Iranian funds that were in South Korean won.
Under the deal, the Swiss National Bank carried out exchange transactions and Qatar paid for banking fees, according to unconfirmed details of the deal published in media reports earlier this week.
During his phone calls with Al-Thani on Thursday, Amirabdollahian hailed Qatar for efforts that led to the release of Iranian prisoners in the US and the unfreezing of funds in South Korea.
It was reiterated in the phone call that both side of the prisoner exchange deal are ready to swap prisoners on the day agreed in the deal mediated by Qatar.
Iran has already released five US prisoners subject to the deal to house arrest while the country’s mission in the United Nations has also revealed the names of five Iranians planned to be released from US jails.
