Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 12
By Dalga Khatinoglu, Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:
Washington demands Iran release its jailed citizens, Steve Fagin, Director of the Iran Office at the US Department of State, told Trend on Nov.12.
Last week, Iran's foreign minister, Mohamamd Javad Zarif, said Iran is trying to resolve the case of jailed Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaeian through "humanitarian" means. Currently, three US citizens are jailed in Iran and tens of Iranians are jailed in the US.
US officials have repeatedly called upon the government of Iran to immediately release Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati, and Jason Rezaian, and to work cooperatively to locate Robert Levinson.
Fagin added, "We have made it clear to the government of Iran that it should release American citizens unconditionally, we should unite them with their families. They should be released independently from the nuclear deal and any other issue between our countries. This is the position of the United States government".
The American diplomat also said that the US has negotiated with Iran multilaterally on a joint comprehensive plan of action, the nuclear agreement, and Iran has been engaged multilaterally with the US in discussing the situation in Syria.
"That has been the extent of our engagement and, again, in its multilateral forms there are a number of differences between the US and Iran, and we just laid out some of them. Again, this involves Iran's support for terrorism, Iran's destabilizing activities in the Middle East, Iran's development of ballistic missiles, and they just engaged in ballistic missile tests a few weeks ago the violated UN Security Council resolution 1959, and Iran is also a serious human right abuser", added Fagin.