The Invisible Hostage Crises

February 2, 2011

By former NSC official, Elliott Abrams, at the Council on Foreign Relations:

It is now a year and a half since Iran jailed three American hikers on trumped-up spying charges. The three, Shane Bauer, his fiancée Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal were detained on July 31, 2009; Shourd was released on September 14 of last year. Recalling the hostage crisis that helped bring down Jimmy Carter in 1980 and that ended on the twentieth of January thirty years ago, it is striking that the Administration appears only mildly disturbed that they continue to sit in jail—as does Congress.

Nor are Bauer and Fattal the only American hostages. The USAID contractor Alan Gross has been imprisoned in Cuba for 13 months now. He was there to help the tiny Cuba Jewish community connect with Jewish communities around the world, and for this "crime" he is accused of espionage. If that verdict of Administration indifference seems too harsh, it is striking that the Administration just two weeks ago announced a loosening of travel restrictions to Cuba whose goals include to "enhance contact with the Cuban people and support civil society through purposeful travel, including religious, cultural, and educational travel" and especially to "Allow religious organizations to sponsor religious travel to Cuba." To encourage contact with religious communities in Cuba while the last guy who tried remains in jail does not suggest that Mr. Gross's release is at the top of the Administration's agenda.

Perhaps there is a secret deal here, and he will be released within days. But if there was no agreement of any kind, the Administration's move seems callous. According to the Washington Post, "The new regulations had been drawn up by Obama administration officials last summer. But, wary of political fallout, they had held off introducing them until after the November elections. Another complicating factor has been the detention of Alan P. Gross, a Potomac contractor who was arrested in Havana in December 2009…." The question is precisely whether Mr. Gross is regarded as an American whose freedom should be our top priority, or a "complicating factor" in the Administration's drive to liberalize travel to Cuba. Even if that were a worthy goal, it is difficult to see why it is a more vital national interest than freeing our citizens.

As to those held in Iran, is it not fair to ask how far we will go to free them? No doubt the Administration has reached out to many interlocutors it believes capable of persuading the ayatollahs: Switzerland (which represents us in Iran), Russia, China, Turkey and who knows how many others. And it was quite sensible initially to believe that quiet diplomacy was more likely to free the two men than loud pressure.

Except it isn't working. Appropriate holidays for "humanitarian" releases have come and gone, and then come and gone again. Those of a historical bent may think back to "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead," the battle cry Theodore Roosevelt used in 1904 during his campaign that year, and wonder whether something more forceful would work better. That is debatable; what cannot be debated is that Iran has felt itself able to imprison innocent Americans endlessly without worrying about the consequences [...]

Although we are not at war with Iran its rulers have been killing Americans for a very long time—in terrorist attacks and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps they would take us more seriously in the future, in ways that would even help our diplomatic negotiations with Iran, if we now imposed a penalty on the regime. Or would it be OK to see Mr. Fattal and Mr. Bauer sit in prison for their second anniversary, and then their third?