In recent months, the Iranian regime, with the support of both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Intelligence Organization and the Ministry of Intelligence, successfully blocked the extradition by European countries of multiple Iranian nationals wanted by the United States for their involvement in sanctions evasion schemes. The Iranian regime’s main tool? Taking Europeans hostage.
For example, the Iranian regime secured the release of Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi from Italy on January 12, 2025, by swapping him for Italian journalist Cecilia Sala. Sala, arrested on December 19, 2024, was a frequent traveler to Iran and was generally sympathetic to the Iranian regime’s interests in Italy; this did not protect her from becoming a target of convenience. On January 4, 2025, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni traveled to the United States, where she met with government officials, including newly elected President Donald Trump, to negotiate Abedini’s release from detention in exchange for Sala’s freedom. She received a green light to proceed with a prisoner swap.
The following month, the Netherlands freed Mahdi Kiasati from detention after swapping him for a Dutch national. Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that Kiasati, wanted by the United States for alleged sanctions violations, would be returned to Iran in exchange for the release of a Dutch national, Pim Kess Levenbergh, whom the Iranian regime had arrested in 2019 and sentenced to ten years for espionage.
The recent exchanges between Iran, Italy, and the Netherlands emboldened the Iranian regime to continue using agents in Europe to undermine U.S. sanctions and security.
As Iranian and European authorities negotiated those swaps, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence wing was already seizing other hostages to use for future bargaining leverage. In January 2025, for example, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Intelligence Organization detained a British couple, Craig and Lindsay Foreman, in Kerman during a round-the-world bike trip. Iranian authorities accused them of espionage, though the couple posted photographs on social media prior to their arrest showing them meeting with an Iranian regime official in Isfahan, raising the possibility that the Foreign Ministry sought to use them for propaganda purposes before the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps decided to use them for its own purposes. On February 12, 2025, Hugo Shorter, the British ambassador to Iran, met with the detained couple in Kerman. The following day, the British government announced the couple’s arrest, though London initially withheld their identities.
A few days later, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Intelligence Organization arrested a German tourist in Iran and transferred him to Evin Prison. Iranian opposition journalist Kambiz Ghafouri broke the news of his abduction on March 2, 2025; the German Foreign Ministry announced the next day that it was trying to verify this news.
The recent exchanges between Iran, Italy, and the Netherlands emboldened the Iranian regime to continue using agents in Europe to undermine U.S. sanctions and security, knowing European governments will sacrifice broader security for the sake of ransoming their own citizens. Such a trend undermines the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign and renders ineffective future efforts to prosecute, arrest, and extradite Iranian nationals involved in sanctions evasion.
The State Department must persuade European allies to cease undercutting U.S. security by facilitating such prisoner swaps. In addition, the Department of the Treasury should consider extending trade restrictions to countries that both remain porous in terms of business security and allow Iranian extortion to triumph over responsibilities to allies. In addition, the United States and Europe should agree to shutter Iranian embassies and expel Iranian diplomats from countries whose citizens the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps cynically seizes. Only when the Iranian regime pays a price in isolation will the cost of its hostage diplomacy no longer merit the payoff.
