The Iranian Human Rights activist, Amir Basiri has written an article in Washington Examiner expressing how taking hostages is a lucrative business for Iran. He said: \u201cForeign nationals and people of dual nationalities in Iran now have more reason to fear being arrested and incarcerated by security forces. That\u2019s because the ruling regime now has more incentive to take hostages and ransom them to their respective countries for handsome amounts.\u201d
\nThat has happened, he explained because the West has not succeeded in addressing the Iranian regime\u2019s dangerous and evil behavior. The West has given concession after concession and in January this year the U.S. government and the mullahs\u2019 regime \u201cperformed a prisoner swap, which also involved Washington paying $1.7 billion in hard cash to Tehran, including $400 million that was forked over to Iran on the same day that the American hostages were released\u201d.
\nObama\u2019s administration say that the payment was not a ransom and was nothing to do with the prisoner exchange, however, others do not agree \u2013 including members of Congress. It appears that Iranian officials do not agree either. They boasted at the time and have now upped their game when it comes to taking hostages to get more money from Western counterparts.
\nRecently the Iranian regime has increased the number of arrests of foreigners visiting Iran. Since the prisoner swap, there have been at least six dual-national Iranians that have been detained, and some have been handed prison sentences for false charges of acting against the country\u2019s interests. However, Basiri points out that none of them are current or former activists against the regime \u2013 they are in fact simply \u201cbargaining chips.\u201d That just goes to show the level of corruption in the regime.
\nJanuary\u2019s ransom seems to have whetted the regime\u2019s appetite for more funds. Sources close to the Iranian regime have said that Iran\u2019s ransom demands could go up to $2 billion.
\nSpeaking about the human rights abuses in Iran, Basiri said that tens of thousands of people had been executed without a fair trial in the country. The United Nations has described the state of conditions in Iran as extremely worrying. Executions have been going on for a long time, and the country\u2019s track record indicates that nothing is going to change anytime soon.
\nHe said that U.S. administrations have tried to deal with the human rights issue. For example, the Iran-Contra affair in which the Reagan administration negotiated the release of American hostages held by Hezbollah (the Iranian regime\u2019s proxy in Lebanon) in exchange for an arms deal. Although the hostages were released, it did not stop them taking more after the deal.
\n\u201cHistory is repeating itself \u2014 perhaps in a much more dangerous way \u2014 and incentivized by the lack of firmness toward its trampling of international laws and human principles; the Iranian regime is continuing to arrest and incarcerate foreign nationals to strengthen its hand in its interactions with its counterparts and peers.\u201d
\nHe adds: \u201cOnly a firm policy can steer the Iran policy in the right direction \u2014 one that does not overlook any of Tehran’s misdeeds, and holds the Iranian regime to account for the crimes it has committed against its people and across the world. The next U.S. president will have a chance to adopt the right approach and show some backbone and determination. In the meantime, lives will be hanging in the balance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Iranian Human Rights activist, Amir Basiri has written an article in Washington Examiner expressing how taking hostages is a lucrative business for Iran. He said: \u201cForeign nationals and people of dual nationalities in Iran now have more reason to fear being arrested and incarcerated by security forces. That\u2019s because the ruling regime now has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":2037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036\/revisions\/2038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}