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"Iranian authorities have linked the case of three American hikers being held in Iran since July with a list of Iranian citizens alleged to be held by the U.S., a senior administration official told POLITICO.
In addition, last week marked the 1,000th day that a former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, went missing after conducting a meeting with an Iranian in Kish Island. U.S. officials and Levinson’s family believe that Iran may have knowledge of what happened to Levinson, but Iran has not provided information nor acknowledged holding him. The U.S. has also asked for the release of Iranian American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh, sentenced to twelve years prison in the wake of Iran's disputed elections.
Late last month, Iranian media reported that a new Iranian NGO had been formed and was planning to file suit against the U.S. to try to gain the release of 11 Iranian citizens it claimed have been illegally detained or falsely charged by the US.
Among those eleven names on the list, are eight Iranians who appear to have been charged with violating arms export control laws and taken into custody in the US, UK, France, Germany and Canada. The indictment against one of those men, Amir Hossen Ardebili, was only unsealed by the Justice Department last week, though he has been in US custody since early 2008, pled guilty in May 2008, and is serving time in a Philadelphia federal prison.
While the United States presses Iran for the release of its citizens, Iran seems to be stepping up its case for the release of Iranian citizens in U.S. custody, several of them on charges related to violating U.S. export control laws -- essentially arms dealing.
Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister accused the U.S. of having a role in the disappearance of one of them -- Iranian researcher Shahram Amiri, who apparently disappeared while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia last spring. "Based on evidence that we have at our disposal, the Americans had a role in kidnapping Shahram Amiri,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki charged yesterday. “Therefore, we expect the US government to return him.” A foreign ministry spoken added that Iran believed Saudi Arabia may have extradited Amiri to the U.S.
The Iranian NGO list also contains the name of two Iranians who have gone missing while on trips abroad, and who are reported to have possible ties to Iran's nuclear program.
The Iranian NGO list also names former Iranian deputy defense minister Ali-Reza Asgari, who went missing in Turkey in 2007. Asgari's Iranian family and Iranian officials accused the West of having abducted Asgari. Other reports suggest he is suspected of having defected to the West.
Asked about the Amiri case yesterday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. is aware of the Iranian claims, but said he has no information on the case.
U.S. officials claim no knowledge of either the Asgari or Amiri case......
But if the list correlates with the one being presented behind closed doors, it would be disturbing that Iran is seemingly drawing an “equivalence” between the three young hikers who accidentally wandered into Iran, and arms dealers seeking to procure US weapons technology prohibited from being sent to Iran, US officials said.... A former senior U.S. official who has worked on Iran said this seems to be a case of Iranian hostage taking. “They do this all the time,” he said. “They try to trade them........ It is all asymmetric warfare.”
“If the Iranians are proposing that there be a trade of those in the U.S. that the U.S. is holding for having engaged in illegal activities, that is the kind of deal – that while distasteful, has a long precedent in Cold War days,” said Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy...."
Swiss intermediaries have told American officials that Iranian authorities have presented a list of Iranians believed held by the U.S. when asked for the release on humanitarian grounds of three American hikers who accidentally wandered into Iran while hiking on unmarked trails in Kurdish Iraq July 31. A Tehran prosecutor said that Shane Bauer, 27, Joshua Fattal, 27, and Sarah Shourd, 31, would be charged with espionage last month, but it's not clear that the charges have actually been filed.
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