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. Households had been elated; governments had been relieved.
However the trade was solely the most recent chapter in Iran’s lengthy historical past of what’s recognized 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 nationals central to its international coverage. For Iran, the strategy has paid off. For the world, it has been a troubling development.
Iran’s calls for have advanced together with its ways. In trade 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 towards humanity.
Within the trade, 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 twin nationwide Iranian. A 3rd, a Swedish twin nationwide scientist, Ahmadreza Djalali, who has been jailed in Iran and sentenced to execution on murky costs of treason, was left behind.
“Iran is perfecting the artwork of hostage diplomacy and taking part in everybody,” mentioned Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen who lives in the US and was a prisoner in Iran from 2015 to 2019. He’s the president of Hostage Help 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 towards hostage taking.”
The primary aim was political.
Iran’s hostage taking started virtually as quickly because the formation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, when a revolution toppled the monarchy of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
A bunch of scholars seized the American Embassy in Tehran and took more than 50 Americans hostage, a 444-day standoff that completely ruptured diplomatic relations between United States and Iran. The Iranians wished the US to ship the deposed shah, who had superior most cancers, again to Iran. (The USA didn’t do this, and the hostages had been lastly launched via negotiations mediated by Algeria.)
Within the a long time that got here after, Iran would go on to arrest foreigners and dual nationals, together with scholars, journalists, businessmen, support 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 cash payment to Iran. The fee, frozen Iranian belongings, coincided with the discharge of 4 Individuals together with Jason Rezaian, a journalist for The Washington Put up.
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 aid worker, was freed after serving six years in jail solely after Britain agreed to pay its $530 million debt to Iran. These negotiations prolonged over a number of British governments.
And final yr, in September, Iran released several American Iranian dual nationals, together with the businessmen Siamak Namazi, Morad Tahbaz and Emad Sharghi, in trade for a number of jailed Iranians. Iran additionally received entry to $6 billion in frozen oil revenues with which it was allowed to make humanitarian purchases of issues like meals and drugs.
“Iran has been always pushing the envelope and discovered find out how to swindle governments to get what it needs,” mentioned Hadi Ghaemi, the director of the Middle for Human Rights in Iran, an impartial rights advocacy and documentation group based mostly in New York. “The hazard is different authoritarian governments can be taught from Iran and make hostage taking the norm.”
Worrying implications.
The information of Saturday’s trade was a intestine punch to victims of Iran’s human rights violations in addition to rights advocacy teams extra usually.
Many feared that Mr. Nouri’s trial, conviction and abrupt swap may have an effect on the prospects of accountability and justice for struggle 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, provided a brazen on-line evaluation of Saturday’s deal. Referring to the 2 Swedish nationals exchanged for Mr. Nouri, it mentioned, “These two had been solely arrested for the aim of a swap.”
The submit, 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 Help Worldwide, known as it “simply evil” for Sweden to depart 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.
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