How do you negotiate with a country that takes hostages? This is the problem posed by Iran, which has just added two people to the group of French citizens who rot in its prisons. In this case it is a couple of tourists, arrested “without foundation” according to the French foreign ministry which demands consular access which for the moment is denied, in contempt of diplomatic rules.
None of these detainees are officially hostages, of course, but regardless of the allegations against them, it is clear that these people serve as a bargaining chip. Just like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British journalist of Iranian origin freed in March after six years of detention thanks to the release of a British debt of 500 million dollars.
Roland Marchal, a French researcher, spent nine months in prison before being swapped in 2020 for an Iranian engineer arrested in France. His partner, Fariba Adelkhah, a French researcher at the Faculty of Sciences Po of Iranian origin, was arrested in June 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison. Another Frenchman, Benjamin Brière, was sentenced in January to eight years in prison for “espionage”.
Complex affair
This “diplomacy of hostages” is perhaps the weapon of the weak in front of the strong, but it is above all a practice unworthy of a state that has positioned itself in the condition of pariah. It is difficult not to see it as a means of putting pressure on Westerners at a time when the Iranian nuclear negotiation is at a standstill and risks failure.
The complex affair has experienced various ups and downs. In July 2015, Iran signed an agreement that provided for the freezing of its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of the sanctions. Tehran continued to abide by the terms of the agreement, but the election of Donald Trump changed the cards. In 2018, Trump took the United States out of the deal by re-establishing sanctions. In 2021 Joe Biden arrived at the White House and decided to resurrect the 2015 deal.
Since March, a text has been ready for signature, but Iran is making a claim that has no connection with nuclear power: the Americans must remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guards from the list of terrorist organizations. From this element derives the current impasse.
On May 12, French diplomats expressed a certain pessimism about the possibility of finding an agreement. The arrests of foreigners could be the signal of an announced failure. Diplomatic sources warn the Iranians urging them not to “waste time” in order to develop their program by pretending to negotiate. At this moment a European diplomat is in Tehran to try to unblock the situation, together with the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim.
The alternative is an Iran that would come dangerously close to the nuclear threshold in a region that is constantly on the brink. Iran close to nuclear weapons would involve the risk of a conflict with Israel and the Gulf monarchies and the guarantee of extreme tensions with Westerners, as well as a prolonged ordeal for the hostages, who are not even recognized as such.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)