EGN NEWS DESK
On Saturday, Iran and Sweden exchanged prisoners. The swap had the looks of any two international locations engaged in diplomatic negotiations to free their residents. Families have been elated; governments have been relieved.
But the alternate was solely the most recent chapter in Iran’s lengthy historical past of what’s identified in world affairs as hostage diplomacy.
For greater than 4 a long time, because the 1979 revolution that put in a conservative theocracy, the nation has made the detention of international and twin residents central to its international coverage. For Iran, the strategy has paid off. For the world, it has been a troubling pattern.
Iran’s calls for have developed together with its ways. In alternate for releasing foreigners it has requested for prisoners, assassins, money and frozen funds. It has engineered complicated offers involving a number of international locations. And on Saturday Iran gained the discharge of its most prized goal: the primary Iranian official to be convicted of crimes in opposition to humanity.
In the alternate, Sweden launched Hamid Nouri, a former judiciary official who was serving a life sentence in Sweden for his position within the mass execution of 5,000 dissidents in 1988.
In return, Iran freed two Swedish residents: Johan Floderus, a diplomat for the European Union, and Saeed Azizi, a dual-national Iranian. Left behind was a 3rd, a Swedish scientist who’s a twin citizen, Ahmadreza Djalali, who has been jailed in Iran and sentenced to execution on murky costs of treason.
“Iran is perfecting the artwork of hostage diplomacy and taking part in everybody,” mentioned Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen who lives within the United States and was a prisoner in Iran from 2015 to 2019. He is the president of Hostage Aid Worldwide, an advocacy group that helps safe the discharge of hostages. “The West is making it straightforward for them as a result of there is no such thing as a unified coverage in opposition to hostage taking.”
The first objective was political.
Iran’s hostage taking started nearly as quickly because the formation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, when a revolution toppled the monarchy of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
A gaggle of scholars seized the American Embassy in Tehran and took greater than 50 Americans hostage, a 444-day standoff that completely ruptured diplomatic relations between United States and Iran. The Iranians needed the United States to ship the deposed shah, who had superior most cancers, again to Iran. (The United States didn’t try this, and the hostages have been lastly launched via negotiations mediated by Algeria.)
In the a long time that got here after, Iran would go on to arrest foreigners and twin nationals, together with students, journalists, businessmen, assist staff and environmentalists. And with every arrest, it requested for and acquired extra in return.
Efforts to settle monetary disputes adopted.
In 2016, the Obama administration made a $400 million money fee to Iran. The fee, frozen Iranian property, coincided with the discharge of 4 Americans, together with Jason Rezaian, a journalist for The Washington Post.
In 2020, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a British Australian educational detained in Iran for 2 years, was launched in a transnational swap that concerned three Iranians detained in Thailand on bomb plot costs.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian British assist employee, was freed after serving six years in jail solely after Britain agreed to pay its $530 million debt to Iran. Those negotiations prolonged over a number of British governments.
And final 12 months, in September, Iran launched a number of American Iranian twin residents, together with the businessmen Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz and Emad Sharghi, in alternate for a number of jailed Iranians. Iran additionally obtained entry to $6 billion in frozen oil revenues with which it was allowed to make humanitarian purchases of issues like meals and medication.
“Iran has been continuously pushing the envelope and realized learn how to swindle governments to get what it desires,” mentioned Hadi Ghaemi, the director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, an unbiased rights advocacy and documentation group primarily based in New York. “The hazard is different authoritarian governments can study from Iran and make hostage taking the norm.”
Worrying implications.
The information of Saturday’s alternate was a intestine punch to victims of Iran’s human rights violations in addition to rights advocacy teams extra typically.
Many feared that Mr. Nouri’s trial, conviction and abrupt swap may have an effect on the prospects of accountability and justice for conflict crimes in locations like Russia, Syria and Sudan.
A information channel affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the highly effective elite unit in Iran’s armed forces, supplied a brazen on-line evaluation of Saturday’s deal. Referring to the 2 Swedish residents exchanged for Mr. Nouri, it mentioned, “These two have been solely arrested for the aim of a swap.”
The put up, on the messaging app Telegram, went on to remark approvingly that Iran had managed the deal with out having to surrender the third Swedish detainee, Mr. Djalali, within the negotiations.
Mr. Zakka, of Hostage Aid Worldwide, referred to as it “simply evil” for Sweden to go away Mr. Djalali behind, and mentioned his group had written to the Swedish prime minister about two weeks in the past urging the nation to safe his launch.
