{"id":37911,"date":"2023-09-18T19:56:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T19:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=37911"},"modified":"2026-07-10T02:58:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:58:37","slug":"freed-american-decries-irans-vile-path-to-profit-of-holding-foreigners-hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/09\/18\/freed-american-decries-irans-vile-path-to-profit-of-holding-foreigners-hostage\/","title":{"rendered":"Freed American decries Iran\u2019s \u2018vile path to profit\u2019 of holding foreigners hostage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An American citizen freed in a complex exchange deal after being imprisoned for nearly eight years in Iran has urged the Biden administration to launch a \u201cgamechanging global endeavour\u201d to end the Islamic regime\u2019s longstanding practice of holding foreign nationals hostage.Siamak Namazi, 51, was one of five US citizens released on Monday under the terms of an agreement that saw five Iranians facing charges in the United States granted clemency and Iran being given access to $6bn of previously frozen oil revenues.

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<\/div>\"SiamakFive Americans head home in $6bn US-Iran prisoner swap deal <\/g>Read moreThe prisoners\u2019 release was hailed by President Joe Biden, who immediately announced fresh sanctions on the hardline former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the country\u2019s powerful intelligence ministry over the still undetermined fate of Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who vanished after visiting an island off Iran\u2019s southern coast in 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>Biden also called on Americans \u2013 including those holding dual US-Iranian nationality \u2013 to avoid visiting Iran, which has been at loggerheads with Washington since 52 American embassy employees were held hostage in Tehran for 444 days in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.However, Namazi \u2013 himself a dual national and the longest-hold of the five detainees after being imprisoned for 2,898 days, most of them inside Tehran\u2019s notorious Evin prison \u2013 in a statement called for a radically different approach to deter state-sponsored hostage taking.\u201cOver the past 44 years, the Iranian regime has mastered the nasty game of caging innocent Americans and other foreign nationals, and commercialising their freedom,\u201d he said after flying from Tehran to Doha, calling Evin prison a \u201cdystopian United Nations of Hostages\u201d.\u201cWe must urgently channel the grievous pain of the victims of this wickedness into the kind of measures that would upend the cost-benefit calculations of Tehran\u2019s foul business. For if we keep this vile path to profit free of risk and toll, this venal regime will keep treading on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again and again.\u201cIt is only if the free world finally agrees to collectively impose draconian consequences on those who use human lives as mere bargaining chips, that the Iranian regime and its ilk will be compelled to make different choices. Sadly, until then, we can anticipate more Americans and others falling victim to state hostage-taking.\u201dNamazi\u2019s comments are likely to be seized on by Republicans who claimed that Iran is likely to use the unfrozen $6bn to fund terrorist activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>US officials insisted that the money will be restricted to \u201chumanitarian transactions\u201d involving food, medicine and medical supplies, and agricultural products.\u201cThis is not a payment of any kind,\u201d a senior administration official said in an issued statement. \u201cNo funds enter Iran, nor do any funds get paid to Iranian companies or entities. At bottom, these are Iranian funds \u2013 payment made by South Korea to Iran for purchases of oil years ago, including during the last administration \u2013 moving from one restricted account in Korea to another restricted account in Qatar.\u201dThe funds were frozen in 2019 as a result of ramped-up sanctions imposed by the Trump administration as part of its policy of \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d on Tehran. They related to oil bought from Iran by South Korea the previous year under a sanctions-waiver scheme.
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An American citizen freed in a complex exchange deal after being imprisoned for nearly eight years in Iran has urged the Biden administration to launch a \u201cgamechanging global endeavour\u201d to end the Islamic regime\u2019s longstanding practice of holding foreign nationals hostage.Siamak Namazi, 51, was one of five US citizens released on Monday under the terms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":37912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4836,5178,9194,12478,11254,11555,8875,6060,8261,6496,11844,4028,12248,9643,10825,12173,11166,13157,2471,6690,10303,5612,10664,12085,5441,11973,3805,8306,11926,8552,6431,6575,5807,10663,5713,12778,10662,7185,10656,7444,7609,13182,7999,9262,6348,9539,2354,36,594],"class_list":["post-37911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-access","tag-biden","tag-charges","tag-chips","tag-citizen","tag-citizens","tag-doha","tag-embassy","tag-evin-prison","tag-food","tag-foreigners","tag-freedom","tag-frozen","tag-fund","tag-hostage","tag-hostages","tag-innocent","tag-islamic","tag-joe-biden","tag-korea","tag-medicine","tag-money","tag-namazi","tag-nations","tag-oil","tag-one","tag-president","tag-prison","tag-prisoners","tag-qatar","tag-release","tag-republicans","tag-risk","tag-robert-levinson","tag-sanctions","tag-seized","tag-siamak-namazi","tag-south-korea","tag-swap","tag-tehran","tag-terrorist","tag-trump-administration","tag-united-nations","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-victims","tag-washington","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37913,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37911\/revisions\/37913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}