--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about Iran's practice of taking hostages. Jason Rezayan, an American journalist who was held captive in Iran for 544 days, joins us to share his story.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jason, you were born in the San Francisco Bay Area, but your dad was from Iran. How did that shape your childhood?
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. My mom was from Illinois. My dad was from Iran. And, you know, as their life progressed, they would travel back and forth to Iran a lot. I was born in 1976. The revolution happened in 1979. The hostage crisis and all of those things that came after really colored my childhood in a lot of ways.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That must have been really tough. But it also gave you a unique perspective on Iran and its people. Can you tell us about your first trip to Iran?
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I made that first trip in 2001, several months before 9-11, returned home, went back again the next year and started filing stories. I'd studied creative writing in college, and some of my professors who were journalists had introduced me to various editors at different publications. So I just start randomly, you know, pitching pieces or sending finished manuscripts to editors. And little by little, they started getting picked up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's how you ended up moving to Tehran in 2009. What was it like living and working in Iran as a journalist?
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I moved to Tehran in 2009. And from the time that I moved there, you know, I never wanted for work after that. There was always an opportunity for me to publish my stories. As a freelancer, I would write about everything. I was looking for stories of real people. So, you know, I wrote about art and culture, wrote about sports, I wrote about food. But I also wrote about the news. I wrote about poverty, wrote about drug addiction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That must have been incredibly challenging, but also rewarding. But then you were arrested and held captive for 544 days. Can you take us through what happened that day?
--:-- Jason Rezayan: We were at home. I had been covering the latest round of nuclear negotiations in Vienna earlier that week. I'd come back. We were preparing to travel to the United States. My wife and I had been married for 15 months at that point. We were going to come to the U.S. for a couple of months, kind of a long break. She was going to get her green card, which we had done all of that paperwork from afar. She had her interviews at the consulate in the UAE. Everything was all set, and we were preparing to go to a surprise birthday party for my mother-in-law. We got dressed. We left our apartment, got in the elevator to go down into the building's garage. And when the door opened of the elevator, there were several guys there with guns pointed right at me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That must have been terrifying. What happened next?
--:-- Jason Rezayan: They took us back into our apartment, ransacked the place. I'm not sure what they were looking for, and I don't think they really found it. But, you know, they took our computers, took our laptops, took all of our forms of identification, paraded us through the courtyard of our apartment buildings in front of our neighbors, handcuffed us, blindfolded us, threw us in the back of a van, and took us to Avine Prison, where I would spend the next 544 days.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jason, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the trauma you experienced. It's not something that can be easily put into words. But I want to ask you about your time in solitary confinement. How did you cope with that?
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I spent seven weeks in solitary in a cell that was about four feet by eight feet with fluorescent lighting on 24 hours a day, only being taken out to be interrogated or for 20 minutes of blindfolded fresh air every afternoon. So that's not a very good existence, right? There's nothing to while away the time. You're not given books. You're not given the opportunity to communicate with anybody. So you're really trapped with your thoughts. So that was incredibly hard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That must have been incredibly difficult. But you also talked about finding ways to cope with the situation. Can you tell us more about that?
--:-- Jason Rezayan: I made a commitment to try and find something to laugh about every day. And I think about things that I did when I was a kid and think about sweet memories with my wife and family vacations that I'd taken, you know, with my folks and baseball games that I'd gone to and trips that I'd taken and everything else that you can fill your time with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jason, thank you for sharing your story with us.
--:-- Jason Rezayan: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, let's talk to Nagar Murtazavi, a journalist and political analyst who has written extensively about Iran's hostage-taking practices. Nagar, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Nagar Murtazavi: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nagar, when does Iran start holding foreigners hostage as a foreign policy strategy?
--:-- Nagar Murtazavi: This really began from the 1979 revolution. We've all heard about the hostage crisis at the beginning of the inception of the Islamic Republic, a group of students taking over the U.S. embassy and literally taking American diplomats hostage, asking the United States to return the Shah of Iran.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And since then, it's evolved into a manufactured judicial process. Can you explain what that means?
--:-- Nagar Murtazavi: So, the Iranians no longer call these people hostages. The process is no longer climbing over a wall and taking over an embassy. You know, publicly acknowledging blindfolding people parading them in front of the cameras. They put them through a judicial process and they what they call security crimes and hold them for crimes of espionage, of colluding against the state, propaganda against the state, collaborating with adversary governments.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this practice continues to this day. Why does Iran keep doing this?
--:-- Nagar Murtazavi: One layer is that the Iranian hardliners think of themselves as this weaker country when it comes to these bigger powers like the United States, like the United Kingdom. They feel like these countries are using the international system to their benefit, international law to their benefit when it comes to this UK debt to Iran, the US blocking Iran's assets abroad, US sanctions and things like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nagar, you've also written about the paranoia within the Iranian government about dual nationals. Can you explain that?
--:-- Nagar Murtazavi: There's some factions within the Iranian state actually do believe that some of these dual nationals, people like myself, I've been living in exile in fear of the security forces. I'll probably be arrested if I go back to the country, and I haven't been in a decade. They do think that these dual nationals, people like myself, Jason Rezaian, Naazani Zahari, are actually spies and agents of these adversarial governments coming to the country to sort of gather intelligence or foment unrest and things like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nagar, thank you for sharing your insights with us.
--:-- Nagar Murtazavi: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today's show was produced by Victoria Chamberlain, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and hosted by me, Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Nike. What was your biggest win? Was it in front of a sold-out stadium? Or the first time you beat your teammate in practice? Nike knows winning isn't always done in front of cheering crowds. Sometimes winning happens in your driveway, on a quiet street at the end of your longest run, or on the blacktop of a pickup game. Nike is here for all of the wins, big or small. They provide the gear, you bring the mindset. Visit nike.com for more information.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you want to support Today Explained, you can make a financial contribution to Vox at bit.ly/givepodcasts.
