Washington Post Reporter's Memoir Recounts Imprisonment in Iran

A pawn in a game of international chess, Jason Rezaian, the Tehran correspondent for The Washington Post, spent 544 days in an Iranian prison.

As Rezaian languished behind bars in Evin Prison, the high-stakes match was being played over the future of Iran's nuclear program. 

"I was treated as an Iranian but when it came time to make a trade, I was traded as an American," Rezaian, the son of an Iranian-born father and an American mother, told AFP in an interview. "It is a hypocritical way, but a very Iranian way of doing business."

Rezaian, 42, who was born and raised in California, recounts his 18-month ordeal in a memoir, "Prisoner," which came out at the end of January.

Rezaian and his wife, Yeganah, were arrested on July 22, 2014 after he returned from Vienna, where he had covered a negotiating session between Iran and the P5+1—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus 
Germany.

After years of economic sanctions, the talks had officially resumed following the June 2013 election of moderate Hassan Rouhani to the Iranian presidency.

The two sides were working towards an agreement governing Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insisted was for civilian purposes but Western intelligence agencies suspected had military goals.

Rezaian, who had worked for the Post for two years and was well acquainted with the restrictions on foreign reporters in Iran, was accused by the Iranian authorities of being the station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Tehran.

His Iranian interrogators were particularly suspicious about a quixotic Kickstarter campaign he launched to bring avocados—a fruit that is not found in Iran—to the Islamic Republic.

"To take a Kickstarter project on an avocado farm, such a silly thing, and turn this into proof that you are the CIA station chief in Tehran is ridiculous," Rezaian said.

He soon came to realize that his "value" and that of his Iranian-born wife was linked to the delicate negotiations over the future of Iran's nuclear program.

"Very early on, they would say 'just a journalist has no value for us'—they kept talking about value, value," Rezaian said.

"Iran has been famous for taking hostages, and using those hostages for trade for many years," he added in a reference to the 1979 seizure of American diplomats in Tehran, a move which led to the rupture in relations between the two countries.

’Very Complex Situation'

Rezaian and his wife also found themselves caught up in the middle of a power struggle among the leadership of the Islamic Republic over the nuclear deal and the country's relations with the West.

"The (faction) that didn't want relationships (with the West) was responsible for my arrest and they were doing everything they could to undermine the negotiations between the Rouhani administration and (P5+1)," he said.

"It was a very complex situation a—at the same time—Rouhani's folks that were negotiating understood that they could use me as leverage as well," the journalist said.

During his 18 months in Evin Prison, in northern Tehran, Rezaian was interrogated, threatened with dismemberment and told he could receive life in prison or even the death sentence.

He was told he would be freed if he pleaded guilty to espionage. Put on trial behind closed doors in 2015, Rezaian pleaded not guilty.

Rezaian said his prison conditions improved somewhat as the months dragged on. His wife was released after 72 days and he was allowed visits by his mother.

The Washington Post, his brother, Ali, and press freedom groups launched a campaign seeking his release.

"I realized that it needed to be as loud as possible because at that point it became a political issue and it was my only chance," Rezaian said. "For innocent people who are captured and used as leverage, it's imperative to keep their name out there."

 Rezaian was released along with three other Americans on January 16, 2016—the day the nuclear agreement signed in Vienna on July 14, 2015 went into force.

"My fate was tied up with how the deal was going to be implemented," he said.

Rezaian said his first months back home were difficult.

"We will never return to the life we had and it took me many months to understand it," he said. "In the first months I thought I was like, broken.

"I could not sleep at night," he said, and was "very paranoid.”

Since his release, Rezaian has campaigned for the release of other foreigners or dual nationals held by Iran such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian who has been detained since April 2016, and Iranian-Americans Baquer and Siamak Namazi.

Rezaian's advice to other members of the press working in Iran is to be "very careful."

"Take all the necessary precautions," he said. "Because unfortunately, the likelihood is that it will happen again to somebody else."

Photo Credit: Washington Post

Kerry Says War Chances Rising After US Leaves Iran Deal

Former secretary of state John Kerry voiced fear Friday of conflict with Iran after the United States pulled out of a denuclearization deal, saying regional leaders had privately pressed him for military strikes.

Kerry spearheaded diplomacy that led to the 2015 agreement in which Iran promised Western powers, Russia and China to scale back its nuclear program drastically in return for sanctions relief.

By pulling out of the accord, President Donald Trump has "made it more likely that there will be conflict in the region because there are people there who would love to have the United States of America bomb Iran," the former senator and presidential candidate told the Council on Foreign Relations as he promotes his memoir, "Every Day is Extra."

Kerry said that Saudi Arabia's late king Abdullah and Egypt's ousted president Hosni Mubarak had both told him that the United States should attack Iran, even while they would not take the position publicly.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an outspoken critic of the Iran deal, had also asked then US president Barack Obama for the green light to bomb Iran, Kerry said.

While UN inspectors found that Iran was complying with the accord, Trump declared the deal to be a disaster for not addressing other US concerns with Iran including threats to Israel, support for Islamist militant moves such as Hezbollah and Tehran's missile program.

But Kerry said the United States was "actually getting them to do things, quietly," including on easing the conflict in war-ravaged Yemen, and believed that President Hassan Rouhani was "trying to move the country in a different direction."

"What Trump has done is now empower the guys in Iran who said don't deal with the United States, they'll burn you," Kerry said.

"He has made it more likely that if there is an implosion in Iran internally through pressure or otherwise, it will not be an unknown Jeffersonian democrat who is going to appear and take over, it will be the IRGC or another Ahmadinejad, and we will be worse off and the people of Iran will be worse off," he said, referring to the hardline Revolutionary Guards and former firebrand president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Trump has lashed out at Kerry for meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif since leaving office, accusing him of violating an obscure US law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating on disputes with foreign governments.

Kerry said Trump was seeking to distract from his own scandal related to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and said it was normal for former officials to maintain communication with foreign counterparts.

Photo Credit: Wikicommons

Trump Lashes Ex-Secretary of State Kerry for Iran Meetings

President Donald Trump lashed out at former secretary of state John Kerry for his meetings with Iran's foreign minister after the Obama-appointee had left office.

"John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people," Trump said on Twitter late Thursday.

"He told them to wait out the Trump Administration!" he said, ending his Tweet with the word "BAD!"

Kerry, who negotiated the 2015 Iran nuclear deal which Trump scrapped this year, said during a tour to promote his new book "Every Day is Extra" that he had met Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif "three or four times" since he left office and Trump had entered the White House.

Without commenting on the legality of such meetings, the current US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, accused his predecessor of "actively undermining US policy."

"What secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented," said Pompeo, who is seen as an anti-Iran hawk.

"This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world's largest State sponsor of terror and according to him... he was telling them to wait out this administration."

A spokesman for Kerry said there was nothing improper about his conduct.

"Secretary Kerry stays in touch with his former counterparts around the world just like every previous Secretary of State," the spokesman said in a statement.

"And in a long phone conversation with Secretary Pompeo earlier this year he went into great detail about what he had learned about the Iranian's view."

"No secrets were kept from this administration," the statement said, accusing Kerry's successor of "political theatrics."

Straight Talk

Asked by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday if he had offered Zarif advice on how to deal with Trump's decision to withdraw from the pact, he replied: "No, that's not my job.

"What I have done is tried to elicit from him what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better.

"I've been very blunt to Foreign Minister Zarif, and told him look, you guys need to recognize that the world does not appreciate what's happening with missiles, what's happening with Hezbollah, what's happening with Yemen," he added, echoing the current administration's denunciation of Tehran's "malign" influence.

Conservative commentators immediately leapt on the act as evidence of "treason," with some calling for Kerry to go to prison.

Asked by a Republican lawmaker during a congressional hearing about the so-called shadow diplomacy, Manisha Singh, an assistant secretary of state, said Thursday: "It's unfortunate if people from a past administration would try to compromise the progress we're trying to make in this administration."

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert added: "I've seen him brag about the meetings that he has had with the Iranian government and Iranian government officials. I've also seen reports that he is apparently providing, according to reports, advice to the Iranian government. 

"The best advice that he should be giving the Iranian government is stop supporting terror groups around the world." 

Photo Credit: Wikicommons