Washington deports 120 Iranians from the US, 390 more to follow

Iran said Tuesday that 120 nationals being deported from the United States under President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, will fly home this week, among concerns from several human rights organizations that the deportees will face threats to their lives upon their return.

"One hundred and twenty people will be deported and flown home over the next couple of days," foreign ministry consular affairs official Hossein Noushabadi told the Tasnim news agency. "The U.S. immigration service has decided to deport around 400 Iranians currently in the United States, most of them after entering illegally."

The New York Times reported that some 100 Iranians who had sought refuge in the United States were being deported to their homeland under an agreement between Washington and Tehran. It said the rare deal between the longtime foes was the fruit of several months of negotiations.

Contacted by AFP, the U.S. State Department did not immediately comment.

The newspaper said an aircraft chartered by the U.S. authorities had left the southern state of Louisiana on Monday evening and was expected to land in Tehran later Tuesday after a stopover in the Gulf state of Qatar.

Earlier this year, the United States already deported a number of Iranians, many of them Christians, to the Central American countries of Costa Rica and Panama.

U.N. sanctions against Iran were formally reinstated Saturday night following the failure of negotiations between Tehran and Europeans over Iran's nuclear program. The United Kingdom, France and Germany, known as the E3, invoked the "snapback" mechanism at the end of August, allowing sanctions lifted in 2015 after the nuclear deal to be restored within 30 days.

The United States, under Trump's first term decided in 2018 to withdraw from the deal and reinstate its own sanctions.

Back in the White House in January, Trump resumed his "maximum pressure" policy aimed at isolating Iran, which he accuses of destabilizing activities around the world, while maintaining that the diplomatic path officially remained open. The U.S. military also bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June during the 12-day war launched by Israel against Iran. Israel, believed to be the only country in the region possessing nuclear weapons, had accused Iran of developing its own, a claim the latter denies.