“The diplomats are now in Iraq custody and will be handed over to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad,” the Iranian embassy press attaché, Amir Arshadi, told the Mehr News Agency.

U.S. troops stormed the Iranian consulate in northern Kurdish city of Arbil on January 11, 2007 and arrested five diplomats under the pretext that they were fomenting violence in Iraq.

The Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee spokesman, Kazem Jalali, told the MNA on Monday that the diplomats will be released soon as Washington is handing over about 20,000 Iraqi and non-Iraqi prisoners to Baghdad based on a security pact signed between the two countries last year.