Iran's longest-held Iranian American detainee speaks out.
 | By Yara Bayoumy World and National Security Editor, Opinion |
A few weeks ago, the brother of Iran's longest-held Iranian American detainee asked whether I'd be interested in publishing an essay he'd written from prison. Siamak Namazi, a dual Iranian American citizen, has been incarcerated since late 2015 for, among other things, holding a fellowship at a Washington think tank, which an Iranian court deemed tantamount to attempting to overthrow the regime in collaboration with the U.S. government. The Iranian government also detained the brothers' father, Baquer Namazi, who is 85, in 2016. His sentence was commuted in 2020, but the Iranian government has refused to allow him to leave the country. |
I was very aware of the extensive outreach the families of detained American citizens have done over the years, but I knew it was a big risk for Siamak, who is now 50, to be speaking out from Tehran's Evin prison. (I can't get into the details of how he got the essay to his brother, Babak.) |
Why was he choosing to write this essay now? I asked Babak. |
"Out of desperation and feeling that the hostages are not a priority," he told me. He's referring to what he and the families of other detainees see as a lack of more aggressive action taken by U.S. administrations to secure the release of those prisoners. |
This is a delicate topic. The Biden administration has been engaged in negotiations with Iran to re-enter the nuclear deal, which the Trump administration withdrew from. The Biden administration has said that the United States is unlikely to strike a nuclear agreement unless Iran releases four Americans detained in Iran, including the Namazis. Given that the talks have made little progress, the hostages' prospects for freedom any time soon are bleak — barring a change in policy from the Biden administration or Iran. |
In his guest essay, Siamak argues that the Biden administration should seek to release the prisoners first, as a matter of principle. |
"I can conclude only that with greater political will and courage from the White House, we could have been home a year ago," Siamak writes. |
Last week, Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, spoke with the families of U.S. citizens held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad and said that President Biden was committed to bringing them home. Babak was unmoved — he's lost count of the number of similar meetings he's attended. |
"Opportunities lost, promises broken, and me not knowing if my children and I will ever see their ailing 85-year-old grandfather and their uncle again," he told me. He won't give up, but to say it's an ordeal is an understatement. |
"It has been devastating to me, and it's like a wound that keeps bleeding and a heart that keeps breaking over and over again." |
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