Days after Iran sentenced an Iranian-American businessman and his father each to 10 years in prison, the Ayatollah said he is willing to release them on one condition: That the U.S. send “many billions of dollars” as a ransom payment.
An Iranian news outlet close to the country’s Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the release of prisoners, reported that Iranian officials have decided to “wait and see” if the the U.S. will offer “many billions of dollars to release” the businessman, Siamak Namazi, and his 80-year-old father Baquer Namazi.
The two were convicted of “cooperating with the hostile American government” and sentenced on Tuesday,as TheBlaze reported earlier.
The report comes just months after the Obama administration paid Iran $1.7 billion — at around the same time the country released a number of American hostages. The White House at the time insisted that the money was not a ransom payment.
But Iranian President Hassan Rouhani suggested in September that the exchange was just that. READ MORE
