The agreement for the mutual release of prisoners by the United States and Iran last weekend has been officially described as a humanitarian swap. But there was no physical exchange of people, as seen in movies.

Six of the seven freed by the United States are naturalized or native-born Americans with dual citizenship, some quite successful before they were imprisoned. Most, if not all, have no immediate plans to move to Iran despite what some emotionally described as unfair American prosecutions that have stigmatized them.

As three of the five Americans who were freed in Iran began to tell their stories of deprivation, and of the tense final hours before they were permitted to depart, the prisoners released in the United States also began to talk for the first time. Yet their expressions of happiness and relief were mixed with bitterness and frustration. Under the presidential order that commuted the punishments, none can appeal convictions, and any criminal records will stand.

“I haven’t had much time to digest my quote-unquote freedom,” Nader Modanlo, 55, a Washington-area entrepreneur who had been in the satellite business, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “It’s difficult to start a new life.”