Iran revives hostage diplomacy in key year for nuclear talks

Less than 20 minutes into Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as U.S. president on January 20, 1981, the Islamic Republic of Iran released the 52 Americans it had held hostage for nearly 450 days in its embassy in Tehran. That crisis, and the bizarre failed attempts to free the hostages, are believed to have led to the defeat of Democrat Jimmy Carter. The release of the hostages was seen as a kind of gift to Reagan. The hostage-taking proved to be such a formidable tool of influence that the Iranian regime has never abandoned it. Today, hostage diplomacy remains a key strategy of its foreign policy, the latest manifestation of which was the arrest in December of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who was released on January 8. This trump card has also been used in an issue facing a key year: nuclear negotiations. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — signed by Iran and the Western powers to guarantee that Tehran’s uranium enrichment program would not be directed toward the production of atomic weapons in exchange for relief from international sanctions against the country — expires on October 18.

Iran has traditionally used the arbitrary imprisonment of Westerners “for two reasons,” says political scientist David Rigoulet-Roze, an expert on Iran and researcher at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS). Some hostages are arrested “to obtain something in return, such as the release of people, in particular Iranians convicted in Europe for involvement in terrorist acts,” as was the case in 2023 with the Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele, and now with Sala, who was freed in exchange for the release in Italy of the Iranian engineer Mohammad Abedini, whose extradition the United States had requested for providing parts for the drones that killed three American soldiers in Jordan.

Another motivation is to collect alleged debts from other countries or to recover frozen overseas Iranian funds. This was the case with a prisoner swap between Tehran and the U.S. in 2023, made possible by the unblocking by the Joe Biden administration of $6 billion of Iranian oil revenues.

A paper by the American think tank Stimson Center, however, notes that hostage-taking reached a “turning point” in 2014, amid talks for the 2015 nuclear deal. It went from being an “opportunistic, responsive tactic” to becoming a “strategic foreign policy tool,” especially in relation to nuclear negotiations. American hostage Jason Rezaian, imprisoned between 2014 and 2016, recalled in his memoirs how Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s foreign policy adviser, confirmed to him that he had been a “victim” of these negotiations.

Since the first Donald Trump administration unilaterally pulled the United States out of the nuclear pact and reinstated U.S. sanctions in 2018, that trend has accelerated, the think tank’s report warns.

Willingness to dialogue

Beyond the fact that Sala’s case is paradigmatic in terms of its use to free an Iranian prisoner in Europe, her release and that of another European hostage five days later — the German-Iranian feminist Nahid Taghavi — now point to a new boost to this hostage diplomacy at a time when the Iranian president, the moderate Masoud Pezeshkian, and his vice-president and architect of the 2015 nuclear agreement, Javad Zarif, have reiterated their willingness to dialogue. On the same day that Taghavi landed in Germany, January 13, after four years in prison, an Iranian delegation met in Geneva with the three European countries that signed the nuclear agreement: Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. The objective of the meeting was to try to reactivate negotiations. There was only one week reamining until Trump’s inauguration.

“Iran is now pushing for hostage-taking because before the U.S. elections, the regime was confident that the Democrats would win,” says former Iranian political prisoner Taghi Rahmani from Paris. With Trump, who they know is hostile, in the White House Tehran “believes it is easier to put pressure on Europe.” This is where the hostages come in, says the husband of the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi.

“[Iran’s] expectations of Trump are not very high,” says historian Clément Therme, author of a report on hostage diplomacy for the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri). He believes that Tehran is “trying to divide” Europeans. The relatively quick release of Sala, who was held for 21 days, can be seen as a concession to Italy, unlike what is happening with other EU nationals who have been imprisoned in Iran for years in conditions that French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot recently likened to “torture.”

At least a dozen Westerners or Iranians with dual nationality are still in this situation. Most are European citizens, accused of espionage or of charges that can be punished with the death penalty, such as “corruption on earth.” Four are nationals of another of the countries participating in the Geneva dialogue: France. They are Nazak Afshar, a Franco-Iranian imprisoned in 2016; professors Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, arrested in May 2022; and Olivier Grondeau, a tourist arrested that same year, whose identity has just been revealed.

Resentment towards France

According to Rigoulet-Roze, Iran “considers France to play a very special role” in the nuclear issue, and he refers to “resentment” toward that country, which he attributes above all to Paris’ role in the adoption of the so-called snapback mechanism, integrated into the 2025 nuclear agreement. According to this specialist, this clause was added under pressure from then-French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

This mechanism allows for the automatic reinstatement of all international sanctions — both those of the UN and the EU — against Iran in the event of a serious breach of the clauses of the agreement, which Tehran gradually stopped complying with when the United States withdrew. To trigger the snapback, it is enough for a country that signed the nuclear agreement to raise the issue with the UN Security Council, and for one of its permanent members to submit the request. The United States can no longer do so, but France, which is one of those permanent members, can.

The nuclear deal also makes it impossible for another member with veto power, such as Russia or China, Iran’s allies, to use it to prevent the re-establishment of sanctions. This “sword of Damocles” against Tehran, says Rigoulet-Roze, is a real threat. Trump’s new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, alluded to Congress on January 21 that Trump will seek “the possible activation of the snapback.”

The French hostages give Iran “a certain amount of room for maneuver.” However, in line with the Sala case, a “paradigm shift” is taking place in Paris, Rigoulet-Roze adds. The French foreign minister now presents the release of the French hostages “as a precondition” for negotiations with Iran. Meanwhile, Tehran “is trying to buy time.” On 18 October, the 2015 agreement expires “and the mechanism for the automatic re-establishment of sanctions can no longer be activated,” concludes Rigoulet-Roze.

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