The leading practitioners of hostage diplomacy have just received further incentive to keep it up.
The leading practitioners of hostage diplomacy have just received further incentive to keep it up.
N o matter how you spin it, Biden’s deal with Iran to gain the release of five U.S. citizens held as hostages was a blunder. The terrorism-sponsoring regime will reportedly gain access, all told, to $15.5 billion — a doozy of a number. In a Washington Post interview, Brett McGurk, the National Security Council’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, promised that “the funds will be spent only on a limited category of humanitarian trade: food, medicine and agricultural products. That’s it.” Although the Islamic Republic was ordered (told? asked?) to use the funds for humanitarian purposes only, it does not take a scholar to determine that such promises are as empty as a can of air. Even if Iran were to oblige U.S. requests, that would still free up $15 billion for Tehran to spend on nefarious ends.
The natural question that stems from the deal: After that slam dunk, what will stop Iran from doing this again? On Monday a Wall Street Journal editorial asked, “What about the Next American Hostages?,” observing that Iran has more reasons now than ever to seize American citizens in Iran. Senator Tom Cotton, who has been vocal about the Biden administration’s mishandling of the situation from the get-go, echoed the WSJ’s concerns: “Now that the ayatollahs know they can get billions of dollars and Iranian agents back in exchange for hostages, what will stop them from taking more American hostages? Absolutely nothing.”
The data support this concern. According to a report from the Stimson Center, in the last 20 years, Iran has revamped its “hostage diplomacy” strategy. Around 2015, during the Obama administration, the Islamic Republic moved from an “opportunistic, responsive tactic, in which an individual arrested for domestic political reasons came to be used in negotiations,” to a more strategic approach, where Tehran has actively “sought out foreign and dual nationals to obtain external concessions from their home states.”
In 2021, the New York Times published an in-depth profile of Emad Shargi, one of the five hostages who was just released. In 2017, Emad and his wife, Amidi, both of Iranian heritage and dual citizens of Iran and America, decided to move to Iran, which they had visited many times, after their children left for college. The Times reported that the couple’s family members in America warned them against the move, but they “dismissed the concerns as exaggeration because neither had ever been involved in politics.” In November 2020, Emad Shargi was “sentenced to 10 years in prison on murky charges of national security violations, after a trial that he not only did not attend but had no idea had been taking place.”
This has been the pattern with American hostages in Iran. Iranian Americans who hold dual citizenship return to Iran to visit friends and family. Funerals, weddings, and the culture itself call them back. Some end up as prisoners of the regime. (It is important to note that the Iranian government does not recognize dual nationality and treats U.S.-Iranian dual nationals solely as Iranian citizens.)
Matthew McInnis, a senior fellow in the China program at the Institute for the Study of War, confirmed that there is intense scrutiny of all Westerners in Iran. McInnis saw Iran’s “hostage diplomacy” firsthand while serving in the State Department under the Trump administration. In 2019, he helped secure the release of Xiyue Wang, a Princeton graduate student who was taken prisoner while doing research in Tehran. “Iran’s entire security apparatus puts Americans (and Westerners in general) under suspicion, which leads to excessive rates of detention. Once they’re in the system, they can become players in a political football game.” McInnis noted that there has been a debate within the U.S. government as to whether Iran actively imprisons Westerners to use them as political pawns, or whether Westerners caught in the Iranian legal system for other reasons are then used by the state for political ends.
Without doubt, it is a good thing that the five American citizens, unjustly imprisoned by a foreign regime, were able to return home. But at what cost? Carrie Filipetti, the executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition, while celebrating the release of the unjustly held Americans, spoke to the core of the issue: “My fear is the Biden administration has just put a price of $1.2 billion dollars on the head of every American traveling abroad. It is not just Iran who sees that –– it is Russia, China, and our other adversaries.”
While bad actors like Russia and China have also engaged in hostage diplomacy, Iran remains the world’s “foremost practitioner” of this dirty business. According to the State Department’s Iran-travel advisory, “Iranian authorities continue to unjustly detain and imprison U.S. nationals, particularly dual national U.S.-Iranian nationals — including students, journalists, business travelers, and academics — on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security.” Unlike for other enemy regimes (e.g., North Korea), U.S. passports are still valid for travel to Iran. Whether that will remain the case is yet to be seen.
In a statement made on Monday, the White House reminded the American public of the travel warning regarding Iran: “The U.S. State Department has a longstanding travel warning that states: ‘Do not travel to Iran due to the risk of kidnapping and the arbitrary arrest and detention of U.S. citizens.’ All Americans should heed those words and have no expectation that their release can be secured if they do not.”
Clear enough. But what are Tehran’s expectations?