US Urges Ex-American Hostage in Iran to Halt Vienna Hunger Strike

WASHINGTON — 

The Biden administration is urging a 77-year-old former U.S. hostage in Iran to call off a hunger strike in Vienna aimed at pressing for a U.S.-Iranian deal to free Americans and other Westerners of Iranian origin detained in Iran.

Barry Rosen said in a Twitter video that he began the hunger strike Wednesday outside Vienna’s Palais Coburg hotel, the main venue for separate U.S.-Iran indirect talks about reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The JCPOA is a 2015 deal in which Iran promised to constrain its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief from the U.S. and other world powers.

Rosen had arrived in Vienna Wednesday morning local time on a flight from New York. He was among 52 Americans taken hostage in Tehran by Islamists who seized the U.S. embassy in 1979, when the country’s Islamic Revolution overthrew a U.S.-backed monarchy.

Rosen started the hunger strike a day before the 41st anniversary of his and other American hostages’ release on Jan. 20, 1980. His protest aims to raise awareness about the plight of at least a dozen Iranians with dual nationalities, four of them Americans, who are detained in Iran or barred from leaving the country.

In an email sent to VOA on Wednesday, the U.S. State Department praised Rosen and the other U.S. embassy hostages as heroes and said it was moved by his commitment to the release of wrongfully detained Americans in Iran. U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley would meet with Rosen in Vienna, the email continued, and tell him he does not need to go on a hunger strike because the Biden administration shares that commitment.

“We strongly discourage him from doing so in the interest of his health,” a State Department spokesperson wrote.

Detainees in limbo

In the United States’ view, the American and other Western detainees of Iranian origin are hostages. Washington believes Iran has falsely accused them of security offenses so it can use them as bargaining chips to extract diplomatic concessions from the West. Iran insists any dual nationals whom it releases should be part of a prisoner swap, including for Iranians charged with or convicted of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and other offenses.

“Special Envoy Malley speaks regularly with the families of [detained Americans] Emad Shargi, Siamak and Baquer Namazi, and Morad Tahbaz, who is also a U.K. citizen, and continues to pursue efforts to secure their release and reunite them with their families,” the State Department spokesperson said.

In a Tuesday interview with VOA Persian before departing for Vienna, Rosen said he would try to meet U.S. and Iranian officials in the Austrian capital to urge them to change their approach to indirect prisoner swap talks that began last April in tandem with the JCPOA talks. Mediators from European powers, Russia and China have been exchanging messages between the two sides.

For the United States, Rosen said a new approach would mean telling Iran to release the detainees before any agreement to revive the JCPOA was reached. “And [if] there is a [nuclear] deal, I want to make sure that Iran knows that if they take hostages again, whatever is negotiated is over completely,” he said.

Rosen said such an approach would honor President Joe Biden’s pledge to make the promotion of human rights a priority in American foreign policy.

In one of several Twitter videos posted Wednesday by Rosen, he said he met with Malley in Vienna for about an hour and had a “very good” talk, but the details were confidential. “I do think that there is a lot of support for the hostages who are being held in Iran. And I think we’ll know more as the days progress,” he said.

US decouples the goals

In its statement Wednesday to VOA, the U.S. State Department reiterated its opposition to making the release of the detainees a condition for a JCPOA deal.

“We have made it clear to the Iranians, and clear to the families, that seeking the release of our wrongfully detained citizens in Iran is a priority and that talks on their release should proceed regardless of what happens with respect to the JCPOA,” the State Department spokesperson said.

A spokesman for the government of former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who left office in August, had said the previous month that Tehran was willing to exchange prisoners with the United States as a humanitarian gesture, provided that such a swap includes the release of Iranians detained in the U.S. and in unspecified other countries “at the behest of America.”

Barbara Slavin, an Iran analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council and an advocate of reviving the JCPOA, told VOA she sympathized with Rosen but did not believe the United States should condition a JCPOA deal on Iran releasing the Western dual nationals.

“The nuclear talks are difficult enough. Also, Iran should release these people whether the Vienna negotiations succeed or not,” she wrote in a Tuesday message.

In his VOA interview, Rosen said he also would try to press Iranian negotiators in Vienna to change their approach to a prisoner swap by urging them to return to Iran’s cultural tradition of being hospitable toward guests and visitors.

“Iranians know how important it is to think of the connectivity between them and other people in the world,” Rosen said. “This is a culture that is over 2,500 years old. But under this regime, Iran is acting as if it were a country of wild animals. Iranian leaders should be ashamed of themselves.”

Rosen said he had not heard from any Iranian officials about whether they would accept his request to meet with them.

The best way to persuade Iran to change course, Slavin said, is to show it hurts itself by scaring away dual nationals, who fear that if they visit the country, they will not be able to leave. “Iran will never reach anything close to its potential while it continues to alienate much of its diaspora and remains estranged from the U.S.,” she said.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Click here for the original Persian version of the story. VOA State Department Correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this report, in which some information came from Reuters

Iran, US Lock Horns Over Sanctions Relief, Nuclear Curbs in Vienna Talks

DUBAI — 

Iran and the United States are displaying little flexibility on core issues in indirect nuclear talks, raising questions about whether a compromise can be found soon to renew a 2015 deal that could dispel fears of a wider Middle East war, diplomats say.

After eight rounds of talks, the thorniest points remain the speed and scope of lifting sanctions on Tehran — including Iran’s demand for a U.S. guarantee of no further punitive steps — and how and when to restore curbs on Iran’s atomic work.

The nuclear deal limited Iran’s uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for it to develop nuclear arms — an ambition Tehran denies — in return for lifting international sanctions.

But former U.S. President Donald Trump ditched the pact in 2018, saying it did not do enough to curb Iran’s nuclear activities, ballistic missile program and regional influence, and reimposed sanctions that badly damaged Iran’s economy.

FILE – This file photo released Nov. 5, 2019, by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, shows centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.

After waiting for a year, Iran responded to Trump’s pressure by gradually breaching the accord, including rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.

Following months of stop-start talks that began after Joe Biden replaced Trump in the White House, Western officials now say time is running out to resurrect the pact. But Iranian officials deny they are under time pressure, arguing the economy can survive thanks to oil sales to China.

‘We need guarantees’

A former Iranian official said Iran’s rulers “are certain that their uncompromising, maximalist approach will give results.”

France said on Tuesday that despite some progress at the end of December, Iran and world powers were still far away from reviving the deal.

The U.S. State Department said on January 4 the issues “at the heart of the negotiations” were sanctions relief and the nuclear steps that Iran would take to return the accord.

Iran insists on immediate removal of all Trump-era sanctions in a verifiable process. Washington has said it would remove curbs inconsistent with the 2015 pact if Iran resumed compliance with the deal, implying it would leave in place others such as those imposed under terrorism or human rights measures.

“Americans should give assurances that no new sanctions under any label would be imposed on Iran in future. We need guarantees that America will not abandon the deal again,” said a senior Iranian official.

Iran’s Nournews, a media outlet affiliated to the Supreme National Security Council, reported on Wednesday that Iran’s key conditions at the talks “are assurances and verifications.”

U.S. officials were not immediately available to comment on the question of guarantees. However, U.S. officials have said Biden cannot promise the U.S. government will not renege on the agreement because the nuclear deal is a non-binding political understanding, not a legally-binding treaty.

FILE – People walk past Palais Coburg, where closed-door nuclear talks take place in Vienna, Austria, Dec. 17, 2021.

Asked to comment on that U.S. constitutional reality, an Iranian official said: “It’s their internal problem.”

On the issue of obtaining verification that sanctions have been removed — at which point Iran would have to revive curbs on its nuclear program — the senior Iranian official said Iran and Washington differed over the timetable.

“Iran needs a couple of weeks to verify sanctions removal (before it reverses its nuclear steps). But the other party says a few days would be enough to load oil on a ship, export it and transfer its money through banking system,” the official said.

Threats

Shadowing the background of the talks have been threats by Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear weaponry but which sees Iran as a existential threat, to attack Iranian nuclear installations if it deems diplomacy ultimately futile in containing Tehran’s atomic abilities and potential.

Iran says it would hit back hard if it were attacked.

A Western diplomat said “early-February is a realistic end-date for Vienna talks” as the longer Iran remains outside the deal, the more nuclear expertise it will gain, shortening the time it might need to race to build a bomb if it chose to.

“Still we are not sure whether Iran really wants a deal,” said another Western diplomat.

Iran has ruled out adhering to any “artificial” deadline.

“Several times, they asked Iran to slow down its nuclear work during the talks, and even Americans conveyed messages about an interim deal through other parties,” said a second Iranian official, close to Iran’s negotiating team.

“It was rejected by Iran.”

Asked for comment, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be identified told Reuters: “Of course we — and the whole international community — want Iran to slow down their nuclear program and have communicated that very clearly.”

“Beyond that, we don’t negotiate the details in public, but these reports are far off.”

Other points of contention include Iran’s advanced nuclear centrifuges — machines that purify uranium for use as fuel in atomic power plants or, if purified to a high level, weapons.

“Discussions continue on Iran’s demand to store and seal its advanced centrifuges. … They wanted those centrifuges to be dismantled and shipped abroad,” the first official said.

Asked to comment on this question, a Western diplomat said: “We are looking for ways to overcome our differences with Iran about verification process.”