Siamak Namazi, a former Iranian-American prisoner who was held in Iran for eight years, has criticized Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s recent call for expatriates to return to the country, accusing the Islamic Republic of continuing a “heinous diplomacy of hostage-taking.”
In a post published on the social media platform X, Namazi said the Pezeshkian administration, like its predecessors, was turning to the Iranian diaspora in times of political and economic crisis.
“Mr. Pezeshkian, you and your ministers, like previous governments during times of hardship, have turned to Iranians abroad and called on them to travel to Iran,” Namazi wrote. “But it is unlikely that even you truly believe the country is safe for them—especially at a time when the arrest of dual nationals and foreign citizens on baseless charges, for the purposes of hostage-taking and political bargaining, has intensified under your own intelligence ministry.”
Namazi directly addressed the president, warning that without concrete steps to end the targeting of foreign nationals, his remarks would be seen as disingenuous. “The only way to prove your government’s goodwill and to declare an end to the Islamic Republic’s heinous diplomacy of hostage-taking is the unconditional release of people like Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali, Reza Valizadeh, and all the other hostages of the Islamic Republic—including those whose names have not yet reached the press,” he wrote.
“Otherwise,” Namazi continued, “your recent remarks will rightly be seen as nothing more than baiting—an attempt to use the Iranian diaspora’s potential to fill solitary confinement cells and keep your case-building interrogators and people-selling diplomats busy.”
Earlier in the month, President Pezeshkian publicly invited Iranians living abroad to return, promising a more open and secure environment.
Namazi was arrested in 2015 and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of “collaborating with a hostile government.” He was released in September 2023 as part of a US-Iran prisoner swap, brokered by the Biden administration, that included the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets and the release of five Iranian nationals held in the United States.
Rights groups and Western officials have long accused the Islamic Republic of using dual nationals as political leverage in negotiations.
According to human rights monitors, dozens of foreign and dual-national detainees remain imprisoned in Iran under opaque legal processes, with access to consular services and fair trials often denied.
The executions of Behrouz Ehsani-Eslamlou and Mehdi Hassani were carried out in Tehran’s Evin prison, where they had been held since their arrest. Both were convicted in September 2024 by Iman Afshari, head of Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, on a range of national security charges.
According to the Mizan report, the charges included “baghi” (armed rebellion), “moharebeh” (waging war against God), “efsadfel-arz” (corruption on earth), membership in a terrorist organization, gathering classified information, and conspiracy against national security. Their sentences were later upheld by Iran's Supreme Court.
"The terrorists, in coordination with MEK leaders, had set up a team house in Tehran, where they built launchers and hand-held mortars in line with the group's goals," Mizan said. "They fired projectiles heedlessly at citizens, homes, service and administrative facilities, educational and charity centres, and also carried out propaganda and information-gathering activities in support of the MEK."
Semi-official Mehr News Agency reported that Ehsani-Eslamloo was arrested in 2022 following an explosion at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, an incident claimed by the MEK.
The MEK, or People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, was a prominent Marxist-Islamist group that staged bombing campaigns against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi andUS targets in the 1970s. It later fell out with other factions of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has since opposed the Islamic Republic from exile. The group’s leadership is currently based in Paris.
The MEK was designated a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union until 2012, though it continues to be banned in Iran.