Iran’s hostage taking now targets French academics – analysis

France condemned as “intolerable” the detention of two academics in Iran. Tehran has held Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal since June, according to France 24. They are just some of several academics Iran has arrested and accused of spying as part of its decades of using hostages to get what it wants. In December Iran released an American scholar it had held since 2016.

Western countries are at the mercy of Tehran because they don’t detain Iranian regime members in response and they prefer the veneer of treating Iran like a normal country, enabling its foreign minister to relax and smile while on trips to Europe, while also detaining European or American academics. Iran does not use hostage taking in its policies with China, Russia or India, countries that Tehran respects and which it knows that hostage taking will result in response, not just diplomatic discussions.

France on Friday said that it was unhappy with the detention of the two academics. It called for them to be released “without delay” and that Iran should show “total transparency.” According to reports in Australia another academic named Kylie Moore-Gilbert began a hunger strike recently. She has been held since 2018. The French academic Adelkhah who was based at France’s Sciences Po school, has also begun a hunger strike.

Iran uses the same methodology with each western academic it detains. It accuses them of spying which means it doesn’t have to produce any evidence, citing national security. It never accuses them of an actual provable crime, such as stealing a car, because then it would need to provide witnesses and details of its invented charges.

Iran targets academics because it views them as the soft underbelly of western countries, and knows that western countries take their universities seriously but it also knows that Iran enjoys widespread sympathy in the West among academics who generally view sanctions by the Trump administration as unacceptable. Iran lures academics to the country by pretending that Iran is a normal state. It knows that western academics want to study Shi’ite Islam or Iranian foreign policy or civilization. It doesn’t turn the academics away for visas, but lures them to Tehran hoping to use them as diplomatic bargaining chips.

Iran is relatively transparent in wanting either prisoner swaps or other deals with western countries for its hostage taking. The regime has been doing this since 1980. It believes it is one of its most effective policies in dealing with western powers. For instance the US conducted a prisoner swap in December and Australia has said that an Iranian scientist it detained would not be extradited to the US. The US has released Iranians accused of serious violations, such as trying to export material for the Iranian regime. In this sense Iran get back its agents by detaining innocent westerners.

Iran sees France as a key to its strategy to get around US sanctions. For instance France’s Javad Zarif held surprise talks with France at the G7 summit in August. Iran had already detained the academics but France didn’t punish Iran, instead it rewarded Iran with the high level meeting.

Western countries tend to talk about “rule of law” and “academic freedom” but in diplomatic relations they don’t adhere to these standards. They also don’t respond to hostage taking by taking their own hostages, instead they act as if there is no relation between the two, neither downgrading relations or responding. History shows that they generally know there is a direct relationship because they say that the hostage taking can be resolved diplomatically.

Most Western governments don’t seem to warn their own citizens regarding travel to Iran that those citizens will become bargaining chips, which means that western intelligence services don’t coordinate diplomatically to protect their own citizens. For instance in the wake of the Iran Deal the fate of Americans held in Iran was not discussed as Americans prepared tour packages to Iran. Americans were not provided basic information on Iran’s tendency to take hostages. On the other hand western diplomats often tell families of those Iran kidnaps that any public protest will make their situation more difficult. This is often without any evidence. The western governments usually don’t want domestic campaigns of public pressure because their diplomats want to be able to work well with Iran unencumbered by pressure from politicians over why Iran can kidnap academics and not suffer any consequences. For this reason families of the kidnapped are often told to not even mention the names of their relatives publicly and that their government is working on getting them released.