NEW YORK — Secretary of State John Kerry and the Iranian foreign minister on Saturday discussed steps each country is taking to implement the nuclear deal as Kerry again pressed for the release of three Americans imprisoned in Tehran.
In a meeting with Mohammad Javad Zarif at the U.N. General Assembly underway in New York, Kerry “conveyed the urgency of seeing our detained and missing U.S. citizens come home to be reunited with their families,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.
Iranian officials recently have signaled a willingness to discuss a prisoner exchange for the three detained Americans.
Among them is Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent who has been imprisoned for more than 14 months and is awaiting a verdict following the apparent conclusion of his secret trial on espionage and related charges. Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Idaho, and Amir Hekmati, a former Marine from Flint, Mich., are serving lengthy prison sentences. Robert Levin son, a former FBI agent, has been missing since he was last seen in Iran in 2007.
“We always talk about American citizens with respect to their detainment in any part of the world,” Kerry said in brief remarks to reporters before sitting down with Zarif. “You can count on the fact we will have a discussion” on the Americans imprisoned in Iran.
Iran claims that 19 Iranians are currently being held in U.S. prisons, largely on convictions for sanctions violations.
Kerry’s meeting with Zarif, with whom he personally negotiated the Iran nuclear agreement finalized in July, was the first of more than three dozen meetings he has scheduled with his foreign counterparts during the U.N. General Assembly in the coming week.
