One year ago in December, I was released from Iran as an American hostage in a prisoner swap. I went to Tehran in 2016 with little knowledge of its contemporary political reality. After a 40-month ordeal in the notorious Evin Prison, I left the country with the hard-learned knowledge that the Iranian regime is obdurately hostile toward the West, especially the U.S., and loathes diplomacy.
This year, as Thanksgiving approached, I could not help thinking of other hostages still held in Iran — at least 11 foreign nationals whose names are known to the public. Eight of them are in prison and three others are under house arrest.
Two days before Thanksgiving, I learned that the death sentence of my fellow inmate, Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmad Reza Djalali, has been reactivated, ostensibly a gambit against Europe ahead of the trial of an Iranian diplomat implicated in a thwarted attack in 2018. The Iranian judiciary informed Djalali’s lawyer that the sentence would be carried out very soon.