Iran’s hostage diplomacy only makes enemies
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. (Reuters)
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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Kylie Moore-Gilbert are just two in a long line of innocent civilians who have been arrested and held as hostages by Iran. Such hostage taking has been part of the Islamic Republic’s “diplomatic” arsenal from its very foundation in 1979, starting with the notorious Iran hostage crisis, when the new regime in Tehran held more than 50 American diplomatic personnel for over a year.
These days, foreign citizens are not swept up in assaults on embassies. They are instead arrested as individuals on spurious charges of espionage or other threats to the regime, before being convicted in highly opaque and politically motivated trials. They are then held as bargaining chips for negotiations against the countries of origin of these hapless civilians.
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