Good win for diplomacy

VIENNA, Austria -- Four American citizens, including a Washington Post reporter, who have been imprisoned in Iran are set to board a Swiss aircraft Saturday from Tehran to an as-yet-undetermined location, where they will be freed as part of a prisoner release deal between the U.S. and Iran. The agreement is the result of 14 months of high-stakes secret negotiations between the two traditional adversaries.

"Our citizens have not yet been flown out of Iran, so we don’t want to do anything that could complicate it," a senior administration official said Saturday. "But we are told the deal is done, that they will be let out."

As part of the exchange, the U.S. will release seven Iranians who were being held in the country on sanctions violations. All were born in Iran, but six are dual Iranian-American citizens. The seven men all have the option to remain in the U.S.

The deal will bring home four Americans who have been imprisoned in Iran for years on trumped up charges, or in some cases no charges at all: Washington Post Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, and Nosratollah Khosrawi-Roodsari. The imprisonment of Khosrawi-Roodsari has never been previously reported.

All the U.S. had to so was drop charges against some Iranian-Americans for violating sanctions for selling stuff to Iran, so really I think it's clear we won in these negotiations.

Predictably, Donald Trump doesn't think the deal "sounds too good"