Iran’s Hidden American Captives: A Growing Crisis Behind Closed Doors
The Islamic Republic of Iran may be holding more American citizens and residents captive than previously thought, according to sources familiar with Tehran’s hostage-taking system. While official open-source data lists five American hostages in Iran, information suggests the actual number could be significantly higher, painting a disturbing picture of the regime’s ongoing strategy of detaining Americans for political leverage.
The human cost of this policy is starkly illustrated by cases like that of Kamran Hekmati, a 70-year-old Persian Jew from New York who was arrested in July 2025 after visiting family in Iran. His alleged crime? A trip to Israel 13 years earlier to attend his son’s Bar Mitzvah. Despite being an American citizen, Iran considers Hekmati an Iranian national since it doesn’t recognize dual citizenship. Now suffering from bladder cancer, he’s serving a four-year sentence in the notorious Evin Prison, a facility known for the torture of political prisoners. Equally heartbreaking is the case of Afarin Mohajer, a California resident arrested in September 2025 at Tehran’s international airport. Released on bail in December, she remains unable to leave Iran despite having an inoperable brain tumor and limited time to live, according to her son. She had simply traveled to Iran to manage her late husband’s finances.
These stories represent just a fraction of the Americans caught in Iran’s web. Other cases include an unnamed Iranian-American woman detained in December 2024 who, although released from prison, had her passports seized and remains trapped in the country. Former Radio Farda journalist Reza Valizadeh was reportedly arrested in September 2024 while visiting relatives and charged with “collaborating with a hostile government.” Shahab Dalili, a permanent U.S. resident from Virginia, has been imprisoned since 2016 after traveling to Iran following his father’s death. He received a ten-year sentence for allegedly “cooperating with a hostile government.” The Trump administration has been careful about publicly disclosing the exact number of hostages, with a State Department official noting that “due to security considerations with respect to ongoing cases, we do not disclose specific numbers of hostages.”
Barry Rosen, who survived the 1979 Iran hostage crisis after spending 444 days in captivity, describes the current situation as “very intractable.” The nationwide revolts against the Iranian regime have further complicated efforts to secure the hostages’ release, making traditional “quiet diplomacy” approaches challenging. “Quiet diplomacy is the best way to go, but I don’t think there is any way for quiet diplomacy right now,” Rosen explains. While he believes in handling the hostage situation discreetly, he also emphasizes the importance of “loudly supporting a democratic Iran” during the current uprisings. As co-founder of Hostage Aid Worldwide, Rosen supports the Iranian people’s protest movements but expresses concern about potential military interventions that could destabilize the country further.
Experts argue that Iran’s hostage-taking isn’t a series of isolated incidents but rather a deliberate state policy designed to extract concessions from Western powers. Navid Mohebbi, a former Persian media analyst for the U.S. State Department, explains that “The Islamic Republic has learned that detaining Americans and other Western nationals carries little cost and often produces tangible rewards — whether sanctions relief, access to frozen assets or asymmetric prisoner swaps.” This systematic approach has proven effective for the regime, which continues to use hostages as bargaining chips in international negotiations. The Iranian government knows that by treating these individuals as pawns, they can leverage humanitarian concerns for political gain.
To combat this strategy effectively, Mohebbi recommends a comprehensive approach that imposes real consequences on the Iranian regime. He suggests automatic penalties for each hostage-taking case, including targeted sanctions against officials involved in the judicial and detention process, permanent confiscation of regime assets, and coordinated diplomatic consequences with allies. Additionally, he calls for the United States to formally designate Iran as a state that engages in hostage-taking, ban the use of U.S. passports for travel to Iran, and maintain a public registry of regime officials involved in these crimes. “The message must be unambiguous: hostage-taking will leave the regime worse off, not better,” Mohebbi insists. Only by raising the costs across legal, diplomatic, financial, and reputational fronts can the United States begin to dismantle Iran’s hostage-taking enterprise and bring these Americans home safely.
