Foreigners in the jails of the mullahs

Islam Mohamed

Over a year ago, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stipulated the terms for noting imposing sanctions on Iran.

They included the release of American hostages. Nevertheless, as a condition, this has not been met by the Islamic Republic so far.

Iran has, on the contrary, stepped up the jailing of its citizens who have links with foreigners or who have dual nationality.

Threat

Iran does not recognize dual nationalities. There is not an official estimate of the number of Iranians who have dual nationality.

Over the past period, Tehran detained dozens of people who have Western nationalities, most of them British and American. It accused them of threatening the Iranian national security and espionage.

Meanwhile, Iranian and international rights groups revealed that Iran detains foreigners with the aim of using them as a pressure card in negotiations with the West.

Negotiation card

Early last month, an Iranian judicial official said that the Cassation Court had sentenced a dual Iranian-British citizen to ten years in prison. The woman’s fiancé said she was being used as a negotiation card by the Iranian government.

Another British Iranian woman turned into an icon of prisoners in Iran. She was accused by Iranian authorities of espionage. This forced British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to give her diplomatic protection. This turned the woman’s case into a legal tussle between the UK and Iran.

Fixed policy

Iraqi political analyst Hazem al-Ubaidi said Iran applies a fixed policy in dealing with foreigners.

Iran, he said, detained the staff of the US Embassy in Tehran upon the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

He told The Reference that after the Iran-Iraq war, Iran’s mullahs proposed that they swap Iraqi opposition politicians living in Iran with the members of an Iranian militia in Iraq.

“Iran wants to put pressure on the West by jailing visitors and journalists,” al-Ubaidi said.