In a statement on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said, “Considering the political, security, cruel and unilateral US pretexts to imprison Iranians, especially the elite, for arbitrary reasons in inhuman conditions, the foreign ministry urges all Iranian national to seriously refrain from traveling to the US even to attend scientific conferences and despite being invited.”
Earlier, Director of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Department for the Americas Mohsen Baharvand, said in an interview with IRNA that “we currently have about 20 Iranian prisoners in the US, but this is not the final number because at any time we may find out that one of our nationals is in trouble somewhere and needs help.”
Iranian university professor Masoud Soleimani, who had been invited to the United States despite receiving a visa, was arrested and detained for 14 months after arriving in Chicago. He returned to Iran on Saturday, December 7, after being released in a prisoner swap with American-Chinese spy Xiyue Wang.
