Recently a US State Department official met with the family of an Iranian-German dual national, signaling a possible expansion of ongoing American efforts to secure the release of hostages from the Iranian regime. The meeting was preceded by weeks of international discussion and debate over a prisoner exchange agreement that is currently pending, which could see five American citizens released from Iranian custody in exchange for at least four Iranian plus six billion dollars’ worth of Iranian financial assets that have been frozen in South Korea.
Various enemies of the Iranian regime and critics of US policy toward that regime have voiced opposition to that agreement in its current form, with many arguing that the financial component comprises a “ransom” payment that could help to finance more malign activities by the Iranian regime, including crackdowns on dissent which have accelerated in the wake of that nationwide uprising sparked last year by Mahsa Amini’s death at the hands of “morality police.”
Other critics have taken issue with the perceived exclusion of certain hostages, including Jamshid Sharmahd, whose family has lobbied for greater attention from the White House and finally secured a meeting with Abram Paley, a deputy special envoy for Iran, on Friday. Apart from holding citizenship in Iran and Germany, Sharmahd is a permanent US resident and had been residing there for many years before being kidnapped by Iranian operatives during a layover in Dubai and taken back to the Islamic Republic to face trial for several terrorist acts attributed to an organization with which he has had prior involvement.
The trial concluded in February with a death sentence, but was described by Amnesty International as “grossly unfair.” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel affirmed this description in an August 14 briefing, calling the legal proceeding a “sham trial.” This no doubt raised existing expectations that Washington would become directly involved in efforts to secure Sharmahd’s release, and perhaps also the release of other people imprisoned in Iran who have meaningful connections with the US falling short of citizenship.
In this respect, Sharmahd’s situation is similar to that of Shahab Dalili, who was arrested after returning to his native Iran for his father’s funeral in 2016, and was ultimately sentenced to 10 years based on vague allegations of spying for Tehran’s “enemies”. According to his son, Dalili had been planning to apply for American citizenship, having lived there for years prior to his trip. The interruption to this plan may have resulted in Dalili being perceived as a lower priority in discussions of possible prisoner swaps, but according to some of the aforementioned critics, it shouldn’t have.
Richard Ractliffe, the husband Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British charity coordinator who was held hostage in the Islamic Republic between 2016 and 2022, expressed this view in remarks that were published by the Guardian on Sunday. Evidently not satisfied by any explanation that relies upon the difference in their citizenship status, Ratcliffe said that Dalili and Sharmahd were at risk of being left behind for “opaque reasons,” and noted that the State Department has so far declined to formally label the two men as “wrongfully detained,” though it has the power to do so.
Ratcliffe emphasized that in absence of that status, Sharmahd’s connections to the West would not protect him from having his death sentence carried out, and might even make him a more appealing target for Iranian hardliners. Noting that at least two foreign nationals have been killed by the Iranian judiciary in the past year, he concluded that “we have seen Iran expand its hostage diplomacy into execution diplomacy.”
Ratcliffe also called attention to the conspicuous timing of the tentative US-Iran prisoner exchange deal, coming just ahead of the mid-September anniversary of the latest nationwide uprising. He said: “This deal is clearly part of an Iranian government plan to manage the anniversary headlines, along with a new round of mass arrests. Why the US government has gone along with that timing, I don’t know.”
Meanwhile, Sharmahd’s daughter Gazelle argued that negotiations to finalize that agreement should only proceed if it looks like they will lead to the release of all known hostages with intimate ties to the US. Using the hashtag “#LeaveNoOneBehind in a post on Twitter, or X, following her meeting with Paley, she expressed commitment to working with the administration of US President Joe Biden to develop a plan for securing that outcome.
For his part, Paley affirmed on the same social media platform that Jamshid Sharmahd “should have never been detained in Iran” and that the White House hoped to see him quickly reunited with his loved ones. This and the underlying discussion of a broader exchange plan seem to have elicited a response from Tehran, though it was not immediately clear whether the intention was to dismiss American involvement in Sharmahd’s case or to frame it as an opportunity to Iranian authorities to also pursue broader aims.
On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani called upon the US government to “explain” its connections to Sharmahd. On its own, the request could reinforce Tehran’s longstanding tendency to blame both domestic terrorism and peaceful dissent as the product of interference by Western intelligence agencies. But depending on the American response, or perceived response, the inquiry could also help to clarify the potential value to the US of the hostage in question.
Officially, Tehran does not recognize dual nationality and in cases like Sharmahd’s and Dalali’s, it generally denies access to consular assistance from their adoptive home countries, insisting that the detainees are Iranian only and that their trial and punishment are purely domestic matters. To the extent that Kanaani was genuinely inquiring about Sharmahd’s ties to the US, it is possible that the State Department was signaling willingness to discuss his case at the diplomatic level. But if this were the case, such discussions would almost certainly lead to new demands on the Iranian side.
Questions were raised about what those demands might entail later on Monday, when Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian claimed that there are no other Iranian assets frozen in any country, apart from the six billion that is due to be released from South Korea if and when the prisoner swap agreement goes into effect. This claim was reiterated by President Ebrahim Raisi in a televised press conference the following day, albeit not before he seemed to contradict the claim by urging the government of Japan to assert its independence from the United States by releasing Iranian funds.
Regardless of whether the Foreign Minister’s claim was actually true, its public assertion could be meant to highlight expectations that Tehran will be able to secure other sorts of concessions through future diplomatic negotiations, including negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program as well as the various dual and foreign nationals who will remain in Iranian custody after the pending agreement goes into effect.
Tehran’s insistence that it can currently access all money earned through foreign transactions is also indicative of the regime’s commitment to promoting a narrative of the “failure” of US-led economic sanctions. That narrative was no doubt encouraged last week when it was reported that Iran would be among six nations to formally join the coalition of developing nations known as BRICS at the start of next year.
Indeed, Ali Akbar Velayati, a close advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was quoted on Tuesday by Mehr News Agency as saying that Iran’s inclusion in the Chinese-led organization “has thwarted the United States policy of isolating Tehran.” Separately, Mehr appeared to suggest that the same development would help to accelerate the development of a trade route linking Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, which the outlet said would be a “game-changer” for Iran’s economy and for international challenges to the existing world order.
Of course, Iran has sought to present itself as the central figure in those challenges, not just through “economic diplomacy” but also through mounting military threats, in cooperation with its BRICS partners, among others.
In Monday’s press conference, Kanaani boasted that the naval forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would soon be outfitted with new submarines, then proceeded to demand an end to the “illegal presence of the US in Syria.” A day later, Iranian state media claimed that Iran had put into production a new air defense system called “Tactical Sayyad,” which is supposedly capable of intercepting 12 targets at once. On Wednesday, Brigadier General Alireza Sabahifard, commander of the Iranian Army’s Air Defense Force, reiterated this claim and described Iran’s overall air defenses as “world class.”
Developments in this area surely owe much to Iran’s growing partnership with Russia, which famously initiated plans to sell Iran an advanced S-300 missile defense system almost immediately after the implementation of a nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers in 2016. With that agreement having been on life support since the US withdrew from it in 2018, Iranian-Russian military cooperation has only grown more extensive, with both participants often praising that cooperation in terms of its impact on Western supremacy around the globe.
Recently the US reportedly pushed for an end to the sale of Iranian drones to Russia for use in the war on Ukraine, only to be publicly rebuffed from the Russian side: “There are no changes, and cooperation with Iran will continue,” said Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. “We are independent states and do not succumb to the dictates of the United States and its satellites.”
