Copyright: EPA
A key condition of the US-Iran prisoner swap deal was the transfer of $6bn (£4.8bn) frozen funds from South Korea to banks in Qatar.
Iran made the $6bn through exports, mainly of oil, to South Korea, but the money ended up in restricted accounts in South Korea after then-US President Donald Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear deal.
Iran agreed to the deal in 2015 with a group of world powers known as the P5+1 – the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.
It agreed to limit its sensitive nuclear activities in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.
But in 2018, Trump withdrew from the deal, saying he didn’t think it went far enough in curtailing Iran’s nuclear activities.
He reinstated US sanctions against Iran and threatened to punish countries and firms that continued buying its oil. Iran’s economy fell into a deep recession.
Iran retaliated by increasingly breaching the restrictions agreed under the nuclear deal, particularly those on the production of enriched uranium, which is used to make reactor fuel and potentially nuclear weapons.
In 2021, President Joe Biden took office with hopes of returning to the deal and bringing Iran back into compliance, but months of indirect talks have failed to resolve the dispute.
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