Iran and Sweden exchanged prisoners on Saturday, creating the impression that the two countries were engaged in diplomatic negotiations to free their citizens, leaving families ecstatic and governments relieved.
But the exchange is just the latest chapter in Iran’s long history of what is known as hostage diplomacy in world affairs.
For more than four decades, since the 1979 revolution that established a conservative theocracy, Iran has made the detention of foreigners and dual nationals a central part of its foreign policy. For Iran, this approach has worked. But for the world, it is a worrying trend.
Iran’s demands have evolved, as have its tactics. It has asked for prisoners, assassins, cash and frozen funds in return for the release of foreigners. It has orchestrated complex deals involving multiple countries. And on Saturday, it secured the release of its most valuable target: the first Iranian government official convicted of crimes against humanity.
In exchange, Sweden released Hamid Nouri, a former judicial official serving a life sentence for his role in the mass execution of 5,000 dissidents in 1988.
In exchange, Iran released two Swedes, European Union diplomat Johan Floders and dual Iranian citizen Saeed Azizi, and a third, dual Swedish scientist Ahmadreza Djalali, who is imprisoned in Iran and serving a death sentence on unclear treason charges, but remains in Iran.
“Iran has perfected the art of hostage diplomacy and is manipulating everyone,” said Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese man who lives in the United States and was a prisoner in Iran from 2015 to 2019. He is head of Hostage Aid Worldwide, an aid group that helps free hostages. “Western countries are making it easy for Iran because they don’t have a unified policy on hostage taking.”
The first goal was political.
The Iran hostage crisis began shortly after the 1979 revolution toppled the monarchy of King Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and established the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A group of students seized the US Embassy in Tehran and took over 50 Americans hostage. This 444-day standoff resulted in the permanent severing of diplomatic relations between the US and Iran. Iran demanded that the US return the deposed shah, who was suffering from advanced cancer, to Iran. (The US did not comply, and the hostages were eventually released in negotiations mediated by Algeria.)
Over the next few decades, Iran continued to arrest foreigners and dual nationals, including academics, journalists, businessmen, aid workers and environmental activists. And with each arrest, Iran demanded and got more in return.
Efforts to resolve the financial dispute continued.
In 2016, the Obama administration made a $400 million cash payment to Iran. The payment and the freezing of Iranian assets coincided with the release of four Americans, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian.
In 2020, British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who had been held in Iran for two years, was released in an international exchange involving three Iranians who had been held in Thailand on bomb plot suspicion.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British aid worker of Iranian origin, was released after six years in prison after the UK agreed to pay $530 million in debts to Iran in negotiations that spanned several British governments.
Then last September, Iran released several dual American-Iranian nationals, including businessmen Siamak Namazi, Morad Tabaz, and Emad Shargi, in exchange for several imprisoned Iranians. Iran also gained access to $6 billion in frozen oil revenues and was allowed to purchase humanitarian supplies such as food and medicine.
“Iran has continually pushed the envelope and learned how to trick governments into getting what it wants,” said Hadi Ghaemi, director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, an independent human rights advocacy and documentation organization based in New York. “There is a danger that other authoritarian regimes will learn from Iran and normalize hostage-taking.”
Worrying implications.
News of Saturday’s exchange came as a shock not only to victims of human rights violations in Iran, but also to human rights groups more generally.
Many fear that Nouri’s trial, conviction and sudden replacement will affect the prospects for accountability and justice for war crimes in countries such as Russia, Syria and Sudan.
A news channel affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful elite unit of the Iranian military, made a bold online assessment of Saturday’s deal, reporting that the two Swedish nationals swapped for Nouri “were arrested solely for the purpose of the exchange.”
The post on the messaging app Telegram was followed by a string of comments praising Iran for reaching the deal without handing over Mr. Djalali, the third Swedish detainee in the negotiations.
Hostage Aid Worldwide’s Zakka said it was “absolutely evil” for Sweden to abandon Jalali and said the group wrote to the Swedish prime minister about two weeks ago asking the country to release him.
