"US won't accept partial deal with Iran on prisoners swap"

President Joe Biden's envoy to Iran has told a group of former prisoners and families of foreigners who are currently behind bars in Iran that he does not want a repeat of a 2016 prisoner swap deal that freed a group of Americans without securing the release of an Iranian-American businessman held in Tehran.

The US envoy, Robert Malley said that the Biden administration is insisting on the release of all Americans imprisoned in Iran and will not accept a "partial deal" in its negotiations with Tehran over detained citizens. 

He claimed that the American citizens are "unjustly" imprisoned in Iran while Tehran insists that those prisoners were tried in impartial courts mostly on charges of espionage.

"I worked on this issue in the Obama administration when we secured the release of a number of our unjustly detained citizens, but not all," Malley said, according to the NBC News.

A group of five Americans were released from Iran in January 2016 at the same time that US authorities freed seven Iranians who had been convicted or faced charges in US courts.

The prisoner releases in 2016 came after Iran and world powers clinched an agreement in 2015 limiting Iran's nuclear program in return for an easing of economic sanctions.

KI/PR