In January, the White House obtained the release of American hostages by paying the Islamic Republic a $1.7-billion ransom. Having been thus rewarded, Tehran is still holding three British citizens prisoner. Authorities have also confiscated the passport of the two-year-old daughter of one hostage, leaving the girl stranded in Iran with one parent in prison and another in Britain. Annie Fixler and Saeed Ghasseminejad urge Britain and its allies to respond firmly:
[One hostage’s] husband recently claimed that Iran had arrested his wife in order to force the UK to settle an outstanding debt of £400 million for undelivered military equipment dating before the 1979 revolution. . . . A European court in 2010 ordered Britain to pay Iran £400 million, and London agreed, but negotiations over the repayment stalled in 2011. Now Tehran has settled on a new tactic—the same one it successfully deployed against the United States earlier this year: using hostages to wring payments from foreign capitals. . . .
After denying any link between the payment and the hostage release, the White House admitted that the cash had indeed provided it “leverage” to cement the deal. But since January, Iran has continued to detain foreign and dual citizens, and is demanding billions in ransom. Whatever leverage the cash-for-hostages situation provided, it appears to have gone not to Washington but to Tehran.
The West must respond decisively. The U.S., UK, and EU should announce that they will no longer pay ransoms for hostages. They should also sanction broad swathes of the Iranian judicial system and those members of the Iranian leadership responsible for these cynical hostage-taking policies.
These efforts should then be followed by a public campaign to isolate Tehran diplomatically, particularly by drawing attention to cases of detained dual and foreign nationals. Only when the regime pays a price for this rogue behavior will the unjust detention of dual and foreign nationals . . . come to an end.
Read more on Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/irans-hostages-cash-scheme-continues-530927?rx=us