Five Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran were allowed to leave the country on Monday, according to White House officials, after two years of high-stakes negotiations in which the US agreed to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue and dismiss federal charges against five Iranians accused of violating US sanctions.

The announcement that the Americans took off in a plane from Tehran just before 9am US eastern time, came as President Joe Biden and President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran were to attend the annual UN General Assembly meeting of world leaders on Tuesday.

The five Americans, some of whom had been held for years in Evin Prison, one of the most notorious detention centres in Iran, arrived in Doha as part of a Cold War-style exchange with two of the five Iranian nationals.

Three others declined to return to Iran, according to US officials.

The Americans will be given a brief medical check-up in Doha before boarding a US government plane to be flown back to Washington.

At the same time, the US informed Iran that it had completed the transfer of about $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue from South Korea to a Qatari bank account.

Top aides to Biden have said financial sanctions and strict monitoring will prevent Iran from spending the money on anything except food, medicine and other humanitarian goods.

But they acknowledge that the deal might free up money that Iran is already spending on those items for other purposes.

The terms of the deal have generated intense criticism from Republicans, who accused Biden of helping to finance Iran’s terrorist activities around the world.

“Iran’s leaders will take the money and run,” Senator Tom Cotton wrote last week on X, formerly known as Twitter. “What on earth did Joe Biden think would happen?”

Administration officials have said the agreement with Iran was the only way to win the release of the five Americans.

The Americans — Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz, as well as two others who have not been named at their families’ request — had been jailed on unsubstantiated charges of spying.

They had spent the last several weeks in Iran in home detention after Tehran agreed to release them from prison while the $6 billion transfer, a complicated process, was completed.

New York Times News Service