The image is a bit blurry. Sitting in front of a flowery curtain, the young woman has her eyes lowered, a black veil awkwardly tightened over her hair. She apologizes to the Iranian people: yes, she and her 14 fellow sailors entered Iranian territorial waters illegally. The scene takes place at the end of March 2007. The Iranians, who arrested fifteen British sailors a few days earlier, stage the confession of the only woman in the group, not on national television, but on its channel broadcast in Arabic. This video will have a lot of impact and will undoubtedly push the United Kingdom to negotiate the release of the hostages, which will take place 13 days following their arrest.
On March 28, 2007, Briton Faye Turney was forced into a televised confession. AFP PHOTO / AL-ALAM (Photo AL-ALAM TV / AFP)
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Since May 2020, it is a young Frenchman, Benjamin Brière, who also finds himself accused by Tehran of espionage. On December 25, he went on a hunger strike to denounce his detention. His crime? Taking pictures with a drone in a natural park and criticizing on social networks the compulsory wearing of the Islamic veil for Iranian women. “The stake is elsewhere, my brother finds himself being an instrument of negotiations which exceeds him. A young Frenchman finds himself at the center of conflicts between countries, which obviously escapes him”, wrote his sister recently in an open letter. The fact is, it’s hard to prove this grieving sister wrong, Iran is so accustomed to using hostages as a diplomatic instrument. The most famous example of course remains that of the United States Embassy, where 52 diplomats were detained for 444 days. But the Islamic regime did not stop at this landmark episode.
Before this French tourist and Fariba Adelkhah, the Franco-Iranian researcher, arrested in January 2019, detained and then placed under house arrest, or the British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, imprisoned since April 2016, Iran had recourse to this process. dozens of times. They are currently a dozen Westerners, including some Iranian binationals, retained by the Tehran regime. This is the hallmark of Iran: no other country uses the hostage strategy in such a systematic way. As soon as Iran finds itself in a weak position, or needs leverage for negotiation in the context of international discussions, life is crushed. In a tweet published on May 7, 2021, ex-hostage Jason Rezaian, Iranian-American journalist for the Washington Post, is not going dead hand: “Iran regularly arrests binationals, subjects them to various forms of torture , deprive them of their most fundamental rights and then exchange them for their other country of nationality. Iran not only recognizes dual nationality, but in addition it targets its nationals specifically “.
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Binational or not, with this hostage strategy, is Tehran making a good calculation? Does this really allow the regime to really gain advantages on the international stage?
Let us come back to our British sailors, in March 2007. At the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been in power for almost two years in Iran. Since his arrival at the presidency, the possibility and the rumor of a confrontation with George W. Bush, who officiates in his second mandate, swells without ceasing. “What would war with Iran look like?” even headlined in September 2006 Time magazine. A year and a half from the American election, and while the idea of a war is gaining ground, Tehran then seeks to remind the Anglo-Saxons that there will be no solution to the Iraqi quagmire without their help. . In addition, the day before the arrest of the British sailors, Iran prints millions of new banknotes bearing the nuclear symbol, whereas a few months earlier, at the end of 2006, the international community has just decided on the most significant sanctions once morest this. stadium once morest Iran. After intense diplomatic negotiations, the mornings were finally sent home on April 6. On Monday April 9, 2007, nuclear day in Iran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad then announced “the greatest scientific achievement in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, following the passage to the “industrial stage” of enrichment uranium, during a speech at the Natanz nuclear complex.
At the end of May, two days following the announcement of the accusations once morest Benjamin Brière, the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed its concerns regarding the situation of several undeclared Iranian nuclear sites, while the stockpile of enriched uranium in Tehran is now almost 16 times higher than the limit authorized by the 2015 international agreement.
Trapped in an absurd system, and hostage to diplomatic issues beyond them, these men and women have little weight in the Iranian edifice. While waiting for the right currency? The Islamic Republic expects to gain a lot from it. In addition to the issue of diplomatic leverage, it also allows it to release some of its citizens. In recent years, the Islamic Republic has carried out several exchanges of detainees with foreign countries. And make no secret of it: Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif declared in December 2020 that Iran was still ready to proceed with prisoner exchanges. At the end of November, Australian Kylie Moore Gilbert was released from prison, where she had been serving a ten-year prison sentence since 2018 for espionage. At the same time, Thailand freed three Iranians accused of terrorism and linked to the Revolutionary Guards organization.
This practice “allows them to release Iranian personalities or agents abroad”, specifies Professor Mohammed Reza-Djalili, Iranian-Swiss political scientist, “to release funds frozen in a particular country for economic, legal and other reasons. policies “. In the case of the French hostage, “the accusations once morest Benjamin Brière are not necessarily linked to nuclear power, but to France or else in relation to statements by Macron. It is a means of pressure to free Iranian diplomats who were arrested abroad, like this Iranian diplomat [Assadollah Assadi] who was sentenced in Belgium to twenty years in prison, in an attack planned in France. ”
“A detestable practice of the Iranian regime”
The stake is also financial, even if it is impossible to establish direct links on the sums which are exchanged concerning the hostages. In the case of Briton Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the London government has denied the idea that the settlement of her case would be linked to the payment of a “debt” for an arms contract, in the amount of 500 million. of dollars dating from the time of the Shah of Iran. In January 2016, Iran freed four American hostages, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. At the same time, according to information from the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration was transferring $ 400 million to Iran, once more in the name of the repayment of a debt linked to an arms contract and contracted by the United States. in the time of the Shah.
Asked by L’Express, the Iranian-American expert, Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group, and generally in favor of a dialogue with Tehran, nevertheless considers that “the hostage strategy is a detestable practice of the regime Iranian. Innocent people should not become pawns in geopolitical conflicts. Whatever gains Iran obtains by taking hostages, it is little compared to the lasting damage this practice does to its reputation and in its image in the world “.
Dr Azeem Ibrahim, for his part, believes in a column for the English-language newspaper Arab News, that this Iranian strategy is largely “counterproductive”. “Forty years following Tehran first used this technique, it is quite disconcerting that Iranian leaders still think it will give them leverage that can advance their cause. This hostage diplomacy practiced by Iran is barbaric and inhuman. This is likely to make the peacemakers in the West hostile to the regime while also giving the war-goers food to grind. What is Iran looking for? It will not help revive the deal. on Iranian nuclear power. ”
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Since the advent of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime in Tehran has always wanted to be taken seriously. Energizing conflicts among its neighbors, putting pressure on binational citizens or simple tourists, developing a nuclear program, everything is in the same direction, that of Iran’s desire to be recognized as a “great” State and taken. seriously. But it is not certain that the repeated use of these Mafia thug methods is worthy of Iran’s image of itself. Following the election of Joe Biden, talks resumed on the Iranian nuclear issue, even if progress remains weak and provocations numerous. In the midst of this diplomatic vagueness, the hostage situation remains at an impasse.
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