Us. Thanks for watching. Thanks A significant development in the effort to free five American citizens who've been in prison in Iran. They've all now been moved out of prison and have been put under house arrest. It is part of a deal to eventually grant them freedom in exchange for Washington's release of several imprisoned Iranians and the freeing of Iranian oil money. Well joining us live now with more details and insight Washington Post national security reporter John Hudson. John thanks for joining us and I'd like to know for you how to characterize this development because these negotiations have been going on for a while. Yeah well I would characterize it as a first step as a part of a larger agreement that has pretty significant implications for a very difficult relationship. I mean what we saw today for Americans coming out of one of the worst prisons in the world it's a big achievement but they're also being moved to house arrest they're still in Iran they're not free yet but that was the first step of a complex deal that is going to see the release of Iranians in the United States and the freeing up of six dollars billion in South Korean banks that Iran can access for humanitarian purposes such as food and medicine. Everyone involved in this deal says that it is you know tenuous given the acidic relations between Iran and the United States but is it in place and today we saw the the first moment of implementation. are John who these Iranian Americans and why are they being detained? Yeah so Iran has a reputation for imprisoning dual nationals and what we've seen in this group is we have a group of Siamak Namazi is one of the most well -known cases because he's an Iranian American and he's been behind bars for nearly eight years which is the longest immigration that an American has been jailed by the Islamic Republic. There's also Murad Ghaz, an Iranian American who also holds British citizenship and Ahmad Shargi, an American Iranian dual national and so those both were arrested in 2018. And so the United States has always opposed the reasons for why Iran imprisoned these people saying that it's baseless and that Iran is taking hostages to gain leverage over them but they've also said anything they'll do to to get Americans free and so these are the fruits of those efforts. John what do we know about Iranians that the US would be freeing? Very little and this is a question that I've posed to US officials and they're really not talking about it that much. in these cases you often see a push and pull between the State Department, the White House and the FBI. You know the FBI really values the people that they're able to prosecute and put behind bars and are reluctant to see those people come away. Meanwhile, the White House State Department wants to see Americans get freed so that's the tension that exists. What I've heard is that the Iranians involved are likely to be ones that were prosecuted for sanctions violations, less for you know being sort of hard and violent criminals, but a lot of those details still have to come out and we're going to be watching that closely. John, thanks for your help appreciate it. Yep, great to be with you. Washington Post national security reporter John Hudson. Traffic