Families of Dual Nationals in Prison: U.S. Should Revoke Visas for Children of Iranian Officials

Two informed sources close to the families of American citizens imprisoned in Iran told NBC on Tuesday that these families have requested the Trump administration to revoke the visas of the children of senior officials of the Islamic Republic who are currently in the U.S. These sources indicated that the families are awaiting action from the White House in this regard. NBC reports that currently four U.S. citizens and one U.S. resident are imprisoned in Iran. The son of Baqer Namazi has requested permission for his father to leave Iran. According to the report, the families of these prisoners have provided a list of the children and relatives of senior officials of the Islamic Republic, including the nephew of Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran, to the U.S. government and lawmakers. The son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, the Vice President of Iran for Women and Family Affairs, is currently a student and resident of California. Masoumeh Ebtekar was a prominent figure in the hostage-taking of 52 American diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in 1979. It is reported that the daughter of Ali Larijani, the Speaker of Parliament, is also undergoing her residency at a hospital in Ohio. According to the report, the nephew of Hassan Rouhani and the son of his former advisor, Hossein Fereydoun, are students in New York. Friends and families of the dual nationals detained in Iran say that the visa issue for the children of Iranian officials should be used as leverage in this matter. An unnamed U.S. State Department official responded to a question regarding the use of revoking the visas of Iranian officials' children, stating that the United States is seeking to use all options to end the arbitrary detention of American detainees and will continue to pressure the Iranian government until this issue is resolved. This State Department official did not provide further details regarding their actions in this regard. Several U.S. lawmakers, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Eliot Engel, support the request of the families of dual nationals for the revocation of the visas of Iranian officials' children. In this context, an official from Eliot Engel's office, a Democrat from New York, who is expected to chair the Foreign Relations Committee in the next House of Representatives, stated that he supports any action that leads to the release of detainees. Xiao Wang, a Chinese-American researcher at Princeton University, has been sentenced to ten years in prison in Iran. Siamak Namazi, who holds dual Iranian and American nationality, was arrested during a trip to Tehran in October 2015. He was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of 'collaborating with a hostile government.' Mohammad Baqer Namazi, a former UNICEF official in Iran and governor of Khuzestan before the 1979 revolution, was arrested in March 2016 while visiting Iran to follow up on his son Siamak's situation. Baqer Namazi is currently on medical leave outside of prison and is banned from leaving the country. Nizar Zaka, a Lebanese citizen with permanent residency in the U.S., is also imprisoned in Iran. The exact number of dual nationals imprisoned in Iran is unknown; however, Nazanin Zaghari, Abbas Edalat, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Imperial College London, and Kamal Foroughi are three Iranian-British citizens who are imprisoned in Iran. Previously, Karen Vafadari, an American citizen, and her husband Afrin Nissari were also imprisoned in Iran. Reuters reported last year that the IRGC detained at least 30 dual nationals on charges of 'espionage' between 2015 and 2017. According to Reuters, 19 of these individuals held European nationalities. On the same day, six families of dual nationals in a letter urged world leaders to confront the longstanding practice of 'state-sponsored hostage-taking' in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This letter was signed by the families of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, Nizar Zaka, Saeed Malekpour, a materials engineering graduate from Sharif University of Technology and a Canadian resident, Kamran Ghadiari, an Iranian-Australian who has been imprisoned since 2016, Ahmadreza Jalali, a detained physician and researcher, and Siamak Namazi. The authors of this letter emphasized that without international pressure, the Islamic Republic would show no willingness to end hostage-taking. These families stressed that 'world leaders must raise the political costs of human rights violations so high that Iranian officials are compelled to release our loved ones.'