America’s unending hostage crisis with Iran

For nearly four decades, Iran has imprisoned American citizens. And for
nearly four decades, Washington has strived to free prisoners through
diplomacy, force or persuasion. The dynamic has bedeviled presidents
Democratic and Republican

By YEGANEH TORBATI and JOEL SCHECTMAN-Filed Aug. 1, 2018,

11:15 a.m. GMT

WASHINGTON – A year before leaving office, Barack Obama stunned the

world with a prisoner trade with Iran. After more than a year of secret
negotiations, the U.S. president announced that five Americans were freed
from captivity, closing a deal he dubbed a “one-time gesture.”

But even before Obama stepped down, American diplomats were back at the
negotiating table, struggling to secure the release of more prisoners.
His successor, Donald Trump, blasted Obama as soft on Iran. As a candidate,
Trump made a bold pledge on Iran’s prisoner taking: “This doesn't happen if
I'm president!”

Trump didn’t deliver. More than a year into his presidency, Iran still holds
prisoner at least five U.S. citizens and permanent residents – including one
taken during Trump’s tenure. The White House declined to comment, and the
State Department said the United States works “tirelessly” to free Americans
held in Iran.

His administration confronts a troubling reality: There is no easy way to stop

Iran from taking Americans prisoner, a tactic Tehran has employed since the
Islamic Revolution of 1979.

That year, Iran took 52 Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Since then, it has detained at least 25 American citizens or permanent
residents, Reuters found through interviews and a review of court documents
and news reports.

Democratic and Republican administrations alike have struggled to find an

effective response. From military strikes to placating Iran through arms sales
and cash payments, U.S. presidents have employed force, diplomacy and
persuasion. Each path has led only to more prisoners, concessions and tension.

“These are probably the hardest issues that I ever dealt with when I was at the
White House working on Iran,” said Kelly Magsamen, a former National
Security Council official who handled Iran during the Bush and Obama
administrations. “The Iranians are quite adept at, essentially, hostage-
taking.”
Iranians say the Americans have been held with just cause. “U.S. citizens that
have been detained in Iran have been arrested for committing grave security
and non-security related offenses,” said Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for
Iran’s diplomatic mission to the United Nations.
“The Iranians are quite adept at, essentially, hostage-taking.”
Kelly Magsamen, former National Security Council official
Iran has detained not just Americans but also Europeans. A 2017 Reuters
investigation found that the Revolutionary Guards had arrested at least 30
dual nationals in two years. One is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-
Iranian aid worker employed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, whose
family and employer deny the charges against her. Another is Ahmadreza
Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian scientist arrested in 2016 after attending a
conference in Tehran.

For Washington, progress often comes with a catch. The prisoner trade
negotiated by Obama contained elements all but ensuring future American
concessions to Iran – including the likelihood of some combination of cash
transfers and the release of more prisoners – and vexing questions about the
captives left behind.

To understand America’s unending hostage crisis with Iran, Reuters

interviewed 12 current and former U.S. and Iranian officials with direct
knowledge of the prisoner cases, in addition to lawyers, family members and
friends of American captives. These voices provide fresh insight into how the
intricate negotiations unfolded – and into the path now being followed by
Trump.

FREED JOURNALIST: Jason Rezaian, among U.S. citizens released from

detention in Iran in 2016, leaves a hospital in Germany aside wife Yeganeh
Salehi and mother Mary Rezaian. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
PreviousNext

As part of the swap, Iran released the five Americans named by Obama –
Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini,
former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, businessman Nosratollah Khosravi and
student Matthew Trevithick – and one Iranian-American whose release the
White House kept secret at the time. In return, the Obama administration
agreed to either free from jail or drop charges against seven Iranians in the
United States. Those Iranians were almost all charged with or convicted of
violating a U.S. trade embargo on Iran. Washington also agreed to drop
charges against 14 Iranians living overseas.

A day after the prisoners were set free in January 2016, the United States
announced it would release $1.7 billion to Iran, linked to a separate, long-
running dispute over arms sales.

MISSING FBI AGENT, IMPRISONED BUSINESSMAN

The deal did not resolve the longest-running case: the disappearance of Bob
Levinson, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who vanished on
Iran’s Kish Island in 2007 while on an intelligence mission.

The Obama administration also did not win the release of Siamak Namazi, an
Iranian-American businessman seized by Iran in October 2015, just as
diplomats were nearing a final deal over the other prisoners. Months later,
Iran would capture Namazi’s ailing father, Baquer, after enticing him to
return to Iran by promising a visit with his jailed son.

FAMILY TRAGEDY: Iranian-American Siamak Namazi and his father,

Baquer, were both imprisoned in Iran. Siamak has spent more than 1,000
days in prison, as his family presses for his release. REUTERS/Handout/File
Photo via Reuters
All told, in the year after the trade, Iran arrested at least another five
American citizens and permanent residents.

The dynamic raises a question among family members and advocates for
American prisoners: How did American negotiators seal a bargain with
Tehran that excluded a former American government agent and an Iranian-
American well connected in Washington?

The answer lies deep in the 2015 talks. The months-long negotiations
sometimes pitted the competing interests of prisoners held by Iran against
each other, in a drama that played out during Obama’s fraught effort to
reach a nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Trump has opened the door to new talks, though they are now dormant. Yet
any new prisoner deal between Iran and the Trump administration would
have to resolve Levinson’s case, or risk the ire of U.S. law-enforcement
agencies, said former U.S. negotiators. Most current and former U.S. officials
who spoke to Reuters did so on condition of anonymity in order to discuss
confidential negotiations.
The negotiations behind the 2016 deal began as a quest to recover Levinson,
they said. For years the FBI has pushed for his release, even as Iran
maintained it had no idea what happened to him.
Washington believes Iran detained Levinson on Kish Island, 10 miles off the
southern Iranian coast.
Wendy Sherman, then the number-three diplomat at the State Department,
had launched secret negotiations in 2014 aimed at resolving the Levinson case
and freeing the other captives. Brett McGurk, a senior State Department
official, led the negotiations, which began in earnest in 2015.
By then, it had been years since definitive proof surfaced that Levinson was
alive. Some State Department diplomats believed the United States should
prioritize citizens they knew were alive, two former officials said. But
negotiators faced pressure for answers from the FBI, lawmakers and the
Levinson family.

Those dueling pressures – finding what happened to the missing agent, while
working to free those imprisoned later but known to be alive – created
another raft of complications in the negotiations.
DIPLOMAT: Then-U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy
Sherman, a central figure in secret negotiations launched to try to resolve the
case of missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson and other captives.
REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
For years, Levinson’s whereabouts were often a vital line of interrogation FBI
agents pushed when questioning Iranian suspects about sanctions violations,
even those who would have no obvious reason to know about his fate.

“It’s like their first question when they come into the room: ‘Where’s
Levinson?’” said a person with direct knowledge of the conversations.

The Iranians sent a team that included a representative from the Ministry of
Intelligence. Typically, the United States only had access to Iran’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. The involvement of this senior intelligence operative was kept
a closely guarded secret and taken as a strong signal Iran was serious.

As talks progressed, the two nations began developing lists of prisoners each
held in its jails, slowly feeling out what the other side would concede.
From the start, the United States was willing to consider trading even Iranian
prisoners seen as threats to national security, so long as Iran released
Levinson, returned his body, or provided conclusive information on his status.
“We told the Iranians very clearly we would have a different conversation if
Levinson was included,” a former diplomat said.

The Iranians responded with a startling offer. In return for Tehran’s

assistance in recovering Levinson, they wanted Washington to reveal the
location of Ali Reza Asgari, an Iranian general who vanished in Turkey in
2007, just one month before Levinson’s disappearance.
“I can’t even describe what that feeling was like.”
Stephanie Curry, daughter of missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson,
after learning he was not part of the swap
For the Americans, Asgari was a special case. In the 1980s, he held top
leadership roles in Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus in Lebanon.
That made him a crucial player in the establishment of Hezbollah, the
Lebanese militant group that killed scores of American troops and civilians in
bombings in Beirut. The United States has long denied involvement in
Asgari’s disappearance.

VANISHED IN TURKEY: Former Iranian deputy defense minister Ali Reza

Asgari, whose name surfaced in early negotiations between Iran and the
United States. REUTERS/Fars News
U.S. diplomats approached the Central Intelligence Agency with this offer but
were told American agents had no information on Asgari’s whereabouts. And
without that, resolving Levinson’s disappearance was off the table.

“It became pretty clear pretty soon that this was not something [the Iranians]
were prepared to budge on,” said the former U.S. negotiator. Iran continues
to maintain it has no knowledge of Levinson’s whereabouts.

So, by late summer of 2015, U.S. negotiators had decided they would agree to
a deal with Iran even without resolving the Levinson case.

On January 16, 2016, as Stephanie Curry, Bob’s daughter, was coaching her
daughter’s basketball team in Dallas, she received dozens of text messages
from family members: There had been a prisoner trade with Iran.

“Oh my gosh, my Dad has been released,” she recalled thinking. Then she
learned the truth.
“I can’t even describe what that feeling was like for myself and the rest of my
family,” she told Reuters.

‘IT’S ON TV’

That same day, 8,000 miles away, another family suffered the same sequence
of elation, confusion and devastation. When news flashed that five Americans
had been freed, Babak Namazi, a lawyer living in Dubai, called his parents:
His brother Siamak was coming home, he told them.

Iranian media initially reported, erroneously, that Siamak was among the
released detainees. Babak rushed to tell his mother: “He's free, he's free, he’s
free!”

“‘Are you sure?’” she asked, Babak recounted in a conversation with

reporters last year.
“‘It’s on TV,’” he replied.

Over several harrowing hours, the family learned Siamak was not on the
plane with the other Americans. He remains jailed in Iran to this day, and
recently spent his 1,000th day in prison.
Siamak, now 46, had been arrested by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps three months earlier and eventually charged with allegedly spying for
the United States. For weeks, Babak had frantically shuttled between Dubai
and Iran to press for his release.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, when Iran had a moderate, reform-oriented
president in Mohammad Khatami, Namazi ran consultancies that advised
foreign investors on doing business in Iran.

HARDLINER: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected president of Iran in 2005.

REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi
But in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner hostile to the West, was
elected president. By 2007, Siamak left Iran, and largely spent those years
living abroad. In 2009, during massive unrest in Iran, Bijan Khajehpour,
Siamak’s business partner and relative by marriage, was accused of espionage
and jailed for three months.

In 2013, Iranians elected the more moderate Hassan Rouhani as president.

Expatriates and U.S. officials hoped his election would usher in detente with
the West. Siamak received periodic warnings from associates that Iran was
still too dangerous for dual citizens, especially those with global connections.
Still, Rouhani’s election inspired hope that Siamak might be able to help his
native country. In 2013, he authored a report documenting medical supply
shortages in Iran as a result of Western sanctions.

He began organizing a May 2015 trip of the World Economic Forum’s Young
Global Leaders to Tehran, coordinating the conference with senior Iranian
officials, including Rouhani’s then-chief of staff, Mohammad Nahavandian.
But after some participants were unable to obtain Iranian visas, Siamak
abandoned the effort.

Soon after, he received a warning. An Iranian associate had been interrogated

by security agents. In June 2015, that man told Siamak he had been
questioned about their relationship and that it would be dangerous for him in
Iran.

Siamak was undeterred. During a trip to Iran in July 2015, he was blocked
from leaving the country, and over the next three months, was repeatedly
interrogated. Finally, on October 13, 2015, he was arrested, and eventually
convicted of “collusion with an enemy state,” referring to the United States.

The timing of his capture – just three months before the big prisoner trade –
presented a problem for U.S. negotiators. They were nearing the end of
complex talks on prisoner releases, the lifting of sanctions, cash settlements
and limits on Iran’s nuclear program. So, the broad outlines of agreements
between the two countries had already been set by the time Siamak was
captured.
25
Number of U.S. citizens or permanent residents Iran has detained since the
1979 hostage crisis
Two months later, in December, Iranian security forces took yet another
prisoner – Matthew Trevithick, an American studying Persian in Tehran.

A month after Siamak’s arrest, in mid-November, State Department

negotiator McGurk contacted Siamak’s relative and former business partner
Khajehpour, and indicated a prisoner trade was possible. Did the family want
Siamak to be in the deal?

The Namazi family’s account of their response to the State Department

diverges from that of current and former U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters.
“We wanted Siamak to be included, and we didn’t even hesitate to ask for it,”
Khajehpour said.
A U.S. official said Khajehpour told McGurk not to include Siamak in the
deal, fearful that American involvement would harm their chances of gaining
his release through their own connections in Iran.

Three current and former U.S. officials said the Namazi family eventually did
ask to be part of the swap in the final hectic days of negotiations.

As the day of the swap drew near, U.S. negotiators asked Iranian Foreign
Minister Javad Zarif to release Siamak and Trevithick as part of the prisoner
trade. Zarif told then-Secretary of State John Kerry that Siamak could not be
included, said former U.S. officials with direct involvement.

“We were given essentially a flat ‘no,’ that trying to include him in the deal
would blow up the rest of the deal,” said a former U.S. official. “And that
would have jeopardized the lives of the five other people coming out.”

The Iranians considered Trevithick a less serious case, in part because he did
not hold Iranian citizenship, and released him hours before the other
prisoners flew out of Iran.

The prisoner deal was negotiated separately from the nuclear agreement,
under which Tehran accepted limits on its uranium enrichment program in
exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Still, in some ways, the two were linked:
Kerry used leverage from the nuclear deal and cash settlement to free the
prisoners, a former State Department official said. And, had the prisoner deal
collapsed at the last minute, it could have jeopardized the nuclear deal.

The stakes were high. Rezaian, Abedini and Hekmati each had been behind
bars for extended periods – Hekmati for more than four years – sometimes
undergoing solitary confinement and torture. Miryousefi, the Iranian U.N.
mission spokesman, said U.S. citizens detained in Iran are “treated with
humanitarian and Islamic considerations.”
“You’re releasing a hundred billion dollars in unfrozen assets and you think
you have leverage the day after?”
Jared Genser, Namazi family lawyer
Rather than demand Siamak’s release, Kerry accepted a pledge from Foreign
Minister Zarif that he would be freed after the deal was done, former U.S.
officials told Reuters. The officials disagree on whether Zarif gave a hard
promise or simply said he’d try. But after nearly two years of talks, all viewed
Iran’s chief diplomat as credible.

The same day as the prisoner trade, the United States lifted sanctions against
Iran. The next day, Obama announced Washington had begun repayment to
Iran of $1.7 billion to settle a decades-old dispute over an arms deal predating
the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

KEY IRANIAN FIGURE: Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif,

who played a central role in negotiations with the United States over citizens
held captive. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
The Namazi family believes Washington squandered leverage. In addition to
the cash payment, the nuclear deal gave Iran access to about $100 billion that
had been accumulating in foreign banks in payment for Iranian oil sales.

“You’re releasing a hundred billion dollars in unfrozen assets and hundreds

of millions of dollars in cash, and you think you have leverage the day after
you've done that?” asked family lawyer Jared Genser.
Kerry, through an aide, declined to comment on the specifics of the
negotiation. But he “wishes everyone had the same outcome, and prays for the
day every family will have the peace of mind they all deserve,” said Matthew
Summers, the aide.

Instead of releasing Siamak Namazi, the Iranians arrested his ailing father,
Baquer, a month later, while the now 81-year-old was in Tehran hoping to
visit his son. The Iranians released Baquer home to his family several months
ago.

STAFF TURNOVER, TRUMP’S CHALLENGES

As word of the swap blanketed cable news, one man declared his opposition:
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and at the time a
frequent television commentator on foreign policy.

The deal, he said, was “wonderful for the American hostages and their
families” but a “diplomatic debacle” for the United States. “Are we simply
incentivizing Iran to take further hostages?” he asked.
Bolton is now Trump’s national security advisor, in office since April. That
makes him a central figure in deciding what concessions, if any, Washington
will grant Iran in any prisoner exchanges. A spokesman for Bolton declined to
make him available for an interview.
VIDEO: Prisoners and Politics
Despite Trump’s bellicose rhetoric toward Iran, the two countries have
considered the possibility of a second prisoner swap, one U.S. official said.
Miryousefi told Reuters there are 22 Iranian citizens held in the United States
or abroad that it wants freed.

But after a series of false starts and diplomatic snubs, the Trump
administration has embraced an approach of pressuring Iran, such as
considering revoking the U.S. visas of family members of Iranian political
elites.

Then, in May, Trump took a step that dimmed hopes for the U.S. citizens in
Iranian captivity: He withdrew from the nuclear deal Obama had cemented,
saying the pact had done nothing to stop Iran’s support for militant groups or
involvement in conflicts across the Middle East.
On Monday, Trump said he would meet with Iran’s leaders “anytime they
want” without preconditions, though senior Iranian officials rejected the
offer, citing U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Miryousefi said an Iranian proposal to the United States to resolve the

prisoner crisis went unanswered several months earlier. Now, with the United
States having abandoned the nuclear pact, any negotiations over prisoners are
impossible, he said.

During his first 16 months in office, Trump did not appoint anyone to the
highest ranking post charged with winning the release of Americans
imprisoned overseas, leaving the position to be filled on an acting basis by a
career diplomat with little direct connection to the White House.

Frequent personnel shifts at Trump’s White House and State Department

have often left family members in the dark about who to meet with.

And of late, neither the United States nor Iran has expressed any serious
intention to discuss the prisoners.
A wrenching choice for families: Go public or stay quiet?
By YEGANEH TORBATI and JOEL SCHECTMAN
After Siamak Namazi was arrested in Tehran in 2015, his family faced a
wrenching choice: involve the diplomatic machinery of the U.S. government,
speak out publicly about the arrest, or quietly work for his release through
Iranian officials.

It’s the same dilemma diplomats and relatives grapple with each time a U.S.
citizen is imprisoned in Iran.

There’s no clear policy on whether families should publicize an arrest or

remain quiet, current and former diplomats say, but rather an ad hoc mix of
what the family wants and the inclinations of U.S. negotiators.

Still, American diplomats have often advised family members that publicizing
arrests could upend chances for release.

Hua Qu, the wife of Xiyue Wang, an American graduate student who has been
imprisoned in Iran for nearly two years, says she received early guidance
from the State Department after her husband’s detention in August 2016:
Keeping quiet could give Iran more flexibility to release Wang.
In a statement on its website, Princeton said it kept Wang’s arrest confidential
“on the recommendation of multiple knowledgeable advisers who counseled
that publicity would likely impede efforts to secure Mr. Wang’s release.”

Qu said she agreed.

“We were always hopeful that the Iranian authorities, they will just ultimately
drop the case and let him go home at a certain point,” she said in an interview
in her apartment near Princeton’s campus last year. “We actually didn’t
expect that the situation could last this long.”

Ultimately, the United States, Princeton and Wang’s family kept his detention
under wraps for nearly a year, even after he was convicted of espionage and
sentenced in April 2017. It was the Iranian government that publicized his
case last summer.

In private diplomatic memos released by Wikileaks, American officials

grappled with the nuances of whether to go public in individual cases. In one
instance they described it as more effective to mount an international pressure
campaign when the captive was a well-known journalist with a pregnant wife.
But publicity was deemed harmful in another case partly because the Iranian-
American worked for a nonprofit viewed with suspicion by Iran.

Adding to the complication for families: Iranian authorities sometimes make

promises about their loved ones’ quick release – if only they keep quiet.

“They arrest someone and then they always tell the families, ‘Oh don’t tell
anyone, this is a matter of one week or two weeks and then it will be resolved,’
” said Bijan Khajehpour, a relative and former business partner of Siamak
Namazi. Khajehpour was himself jailed in Iran in 2009.

Iran historian Shaul Bakhash, the husband of Haleh Esfandiari, a scholar

arrested by Iranian authorities in 2007, said “it’s always wrong to stay quiet.”

Esfandiari was prevented from leaving the country and regularly

interrogated. Initially, Bakhash said, the family kept quiet. But when she was
arrested, he broadcast that Iran had arrested a grandmother in her 60s on
vague charges.
“It’s important for the Iranian authorities … to realize that this kind of
conduct is unacceptable by international standards,” Bakhash said.

VIGIL FOR GRAD STUDENT: Hua Qu rallies support for her husband,
Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang, during a 2017 vigil on campus.
REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Iran, Hostages and Hurdles: A Timeline
By JOEL SCHECTMAN and YEGANEH TORBATI

CHAPTER 1: STUDENT REVOLT, AMERICAN HOSTAGES AND

PRESIDENTIAL FALLOUT
CRISIS BEGINS: In 1979, militant student activists took 52 people hostage, a
saga that lasted over a year. REUTERS
NOVEMBER 1979 Militant Iranian student activists storm the U.S. embassy
in Tehran, taking 52 people hostage (above) for more than a year. The
students, aligned with Iran’s new Islamist government, demand that
Washington return the deposed Shah, who is receiving medical treatment in
America, to stand trial in Iran.

APRIL 1980 U.S. President Jimmy Carter cuts all diplomatic ties to Iran,
orders an economic embargo and invalidates all U.S. visas issued to Iranian
citizens. After Carter fails to win the hostages’ release, he orders a military
rescue operation that ends in disaster. The complex raid, Operation Eagle
Claw, involving more than a dozen aircraft and a hundred U.S. commandos,
is aborted amid a sandstorm and helicopter equipment malfunctions. As the
team prepares to return home, two aircraft collide, killing eight servicemen.
The failed mission contributes to Ronald Reagan’s landslide defeat of Carter
in the presidential elections in November.
JANUARY 1981 Carter’s diplomats agree to release more than $7 billion in
seized Iranian assets in exchange for the release of the hostages – freed the
day Reagan enters the White House. The payments are the first time
Washington grants Tehran financial incentives in exchange for the release of
prisoners – a pattern that will continue for three decades.

1984-1985 Over 14 months, Iranian-backed Shiite militants take seven

Americans hostage in separate kidnappings, including the CIA’s Beirut
station chief. President Reagan says he won’t make any deal with militants.
“None of us, any country, can afford to pay terrorists for crimes that they're
committing because that will only lead to more crimes.”

AUGUST 1985 Despite the tough talk, the Reagan Administration also falls
back on clandestine offerings to Iran to resolve the crisis. Hoping to secure
Iran’s help in freeing the hostages, the Reagan administration secretly begins
to allow the shipment of U.S.-made weapons to Iran from Israel. Discovery of
the illegal weapons deal ultimately leads to a score of indictments of U.S.
officials, including Reagan’s secretary of defense and national security
advisor. Still, Washington will not gain release of all the hostages for six more
years.

NOVEMBER 1991 President George H.W. Bush agrees to pay Iran more than
$278 million to settle a dispute over undelivered weapons. Iran-aligned
militias release the remaining three American hostages in ensuing weeks.

CHAPTER 2: A BRIEF RAPPROCHEMENT, THEN MORE HOSTAGES

NEW PATH: After his election in 1997, Iranian President Mohammad
Khatami attempts to move his country toward more harmonious relations
with the West. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis
1997 – 2005 Mohammad Khatami (above) is elected Iran president and
attempts to shift from hostility toward a policy of rapprochement with the
West.

JUNE 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardline firebrand, is elected on a

conservative platform. Relations with the United States deteriorate.

2007 British technology consultant Peter Moore and four bodyguards are
kidnapped by an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq. In an apparent prisoner
trade after 31 months of captivity, Moore is released hours after the U.S.
military transfers a leader of an Iran-backed militia to Iraqi custody, which
frees the militant days later.

CHAPTER 3: THE CASE OF THE MISSING FBI AGENT

SEEKING ANSWERS, HELP: Christine Levinson, the wife of Robert

Levinson, and their son Daniel Levinson share a photograph of the missing
former FBI agent during a news conference at Switzerland's embassy in
Tehran in December 2007. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl
MARCH 2007 (above) In a case that will bedevil three successive U.S.
presidents, former FBI agent Robert Levinson disappears while visiting Iran’s
Kish Island, during a trip later revealed to have been conducted while he was
on a CIA contract. While the Bush administration almost immediately blames
Tehran, U.S. officials insist Levinson is a private contractor. It takes the
United States years to acknowledge he was on a U.S. mission.

MAY 2007 Just as American and Iranian officials hold their highest-level
talks in decades over how to end the conflict in Iraq, Iran’s security services
detain three Iranian-Americans: Scholar Haleh Esfandiari, social scientist
Kian Tajbakhsh and businessman Ali Shakeri. Reporter Parnaz Azima had
been prevented from leaving Iran since January 2007. The four are freed later
that year.

OCTOBER 2007 Iranian-American dual citizen Nik Moradi is arrested upon

his arrival at the Tehran airport. He is jailed for six months, and is
interrogated, drugged and beaten, he later alleges in a lawsuit against Iran.
Iranian authorities extract a false confession he spied for foreign intelligence
agencies, according to his lawsuit.

MAY 2008 Iranian-American businessman Reza Taghavi is arrested in Iran

on suspicion he was affiliated with an anti-government group and is held for
more than two years. The U.S. government does not play a major role in his
release, his attorney told CNN, to avoid Taghavi becoming a political pawn.

JUNE 2008 Iran arrests Silva Harotonian, an Iranian-Armenian

administrative officer for IREX, which receives some U.S. government
funding, and charges her with trying to foment a “soft revolution” in Iran.
She was working on maternal and child health, but Iran had long been
suspicious of civil activism efforts. In 2009 she is sentenced to three years in
prison. The U.S. seeks her release, and she is freed in 2010.

MARCH 2009 American diplomat Richard Holbrooke meets an Iranian

delegate at the Hague, seeking Iran’s “humanitarian help” on Levinson and
two Iranian-American women, Roxana Saberi and Esha Momeni. Saberi, a
journalist, had been arrested earlier that year. Momeni, a women’s rights
activist and researcher, had been unable to leave Iran since the previous year.
They were ultimately released.
CHAPTER 4: IRANIAN PROTESTS, HIGH PROFILE DETAINMENTS

GOING HOME: Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, U.S. hikers
who were held in Iran on charges of espionage, receive gifts in Muscat, ahead
of their departure to the United States in 2011. REUTERS/Jumana El
Heloueh
JULY 2009 After millions of Iranians protest the results of presidential
elections a month earlier, Tehran cracks down on civil society. Iranian
authorities again arrest Kian Tajbakhsh, and he is convicted of acting against
national security and sentenced to 15 years in prison. His sentence is later
reduced to five years, and in 2010, he was released from prison but barred
from leaving the country. U.S. diplomats finally won his freedom as part of a
January 2016 prisoner swap with Iran, and he left Iran shortly after.

JULY 2009 After Washington condemns Tehran’s crackdown, Iranian border

guards arrest Americans Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer
(above), who hiked over the Iraqi-Iranian boundary by accident. The case will
dominate U.S.-Iran relations for two years. Shourd is released in 2010, and
Fattal and Bauer in 2011. In exchange, Oman reportedly pays around
$500,000 bail for each prisoner.
AUGUST 2011 Iranian-American Marine veteran Amir Hekmati is arrested
while visiting family in Iran. He is sentenced to a 10-year prison term on
espionage charges.

MAY 2012 Iranian authorities arrest Afsaneh Azadeh, an Iranian-American

dual national, as she arrives in Tehran to visit her mother, accusing her of
being a CIA operative. She is imprisoned for four months and undergoes
torture and mock executions, according to a federal complaint against Iran
she filed in 2016.

AUGUST 2012 Iran confiscates the passports of Iranian-American

Nosratollah Khosravi as he is in Iran visiting family. In April 2015, his
passports are returned, but when he goes to the Tehran airport to return to
the U.S. in May, he is confined to Evin Prison. He spends eight months in
confinement and is subjected to torture, according to a lawsuit he later files.

SEPTEMBER 2012 Iranian-American Saeed Abedini is arrested and later

sentenced to eight years’ jail on allegations of undermining national security.

JULY 2014 Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is jailed in Iran and
later charged with espionage. He denies the charges.

CHAPTER 5: NEGOTIATIONS, THEN THE PRISONER SWAP

PLEAS FOR AID WORKER: Supporters demand the release of Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation
imprisoned in Iran. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
SEPTEMBER 2015 Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tells CNN Iran is
prepared to release American prisoners if the U.S. releases Iranian prisoners.
Secretary of State John Kerry confirms talks and says, “we'll wait and see."
At the same time, U.S. resident and Lebanese citizen Nizar Zakka is arrested
while in Iran to attend a conference. In September 2016 he is sentenced to 10
years’ prison over spying allegations, which his lawyer denies.

OCTOBER 2015 Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi is arrested

by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in Iran and later sentenced to
10 years’ prison on spying allegations.

DECEMBER 2015 Matthew Trevithick, an American studying Persian in

Iran, is arrested by three people in an unmarked car and imprisoned for 41
days.

JANUARY 2016 Rezaian, Abedini, Hekmati, Trevithick, Tajbakhsh and

Khosravi are released by Iran in a prisoner swap with the United States, the
culmination of 14 months of negotiations. In return, the U.S. agrees to free or
drop charges against seven Iranians in the U.S., and drop charges against 14
others overseas. Washington releases $1.7 billion to Iran, linked to a separate
dispute. Still, America fails to secure the release of Namazi or resolve
Levinson’s case.

FEBRUARY 2016 Siamak Namazi’s father, Baquer Namazi, is arrested upon

his arrival in Tehran and later sentenced to 10 years’ prison on allegations of
spying. Namazi’s arrest heralds a spate of captures in the aftermath of the
“one-time” deal, including Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang, arrested
in Iran in August 2016 while doing research for his doctoral thesis. He is
convicted of spying and sentenced to 10 years’ prison in 2017.

APRIL 2016 Iranian authorities arrest British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin

Zaghari-Ratcliffe (above) at the Tehran airport as she is returning from a
family visit. She is convicted of trying to overthrow the government, a charge
denied by her family and her employer, Thomson Reuters Foundation, a
charity organization independent of Reuters News.
JULY 2016 Iranian-American Karan Vafadari and his wife Afarin Niasari, a
U.S. permanent resident, are arrested for organizing mixed gender parties
and having alcohol, and later charged with more serious national-security
crimes. In January 2018 the couple is sentenced to 27 years and 16 years in
prison, respectively. Also in July, Iranian-American Robin Shahini is arrested
on charges of acting against national security. He is released on bail in March
2017, and filed suit against Iran in a U.S. court in July 2018.

JANUARY 2018 Despite new President Trump’s tough rhetoric, Iran does not
end its practice of taking American prisoners: Iranian-American businessman
and environmentalist Morad Tahbaz is arrested in Iran.

JULY 2018 Vafadari and Niasari are released on bail from Evin Prison,
according to a group focused on human rights in Iran.

Held Hostage

By Yeganeh Torbati and Joel Schectman

Photo editing: Steve McKinley and Chris Helgren
Video: Justin Mitchell
Design: Pete Hausler