Consultant’s Arrest Chills Iranian-Americans

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/world/middleeast/consultants-arrest-chills-iranian-americans.html

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The authorities in Iran have long made clear that Iranian-Americans with backgrounds in news gathering, military training and Christian proselytizing are suspect. Now add business consulting to the list.

When Iran freed four Americans of Iranian descent last month in a prisoner deal with the United States, announced when the nuclear agreement took effect, a prominent business consultant whose release had been expected was missing.

The incarceration of the consultant, Siamak Namazi, has stirred anxiety among Iranian-Americans who thought the nuclear deal portended a new era.

“It’s a very devastating situation, to be honest,” said Ahmad Kiarostami, a California-based software and multimedia executive who knows Mr. Namazi. “Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no news about his case.”

Other Iranian-Americans, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they were postponing or scrapping planned trips to Iran until Mr. Namazi was released, or at least until the circumstances surrounding his case were clearer.

Mr. Namazi, 44, was particularly well connected in Iran. He was also well versed in the ways of the United States, where he became a citizen and a scholar of public policy.

The son of a former Iranian governor who became a Unicef representative abroad, he grew up in Iran, Somalia, Kenya, Egypt and the United States, studying international relations at Tufts and urban planning at Rutgers. He returned to Iran in 1999 to work as a consultant for foreign businesses, and in 2007 he moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Before he was arrested last October, Mr. Namazi was a strategic planning executive at Crescent Petroleum, a privately owned energy company with dealings throughout the Middle East. He was also an outspoken proponent of improved relations between the United States and Iran and had criticized the impact of American sanctions.

Mr. Namazi was arrested by operatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps while visiting relatives in Tehran, acquaintances have said. His family has declined to comment, and there has been no word on what charges, if any, he may face.

Increasingly alarmed, five Iranian-American advocacy groups on Monday released the text of a letter sent on Friday to Secretary of State John Kerry imploring him to “redouble your efforts” to secure Mr. Namazi’s release.

“Siamak Namazi has committed no crime,” the letter stated. “He was simply doing what he loved: building bridges between Iran and the Western world.”

A spokesman for the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs, Sam Werberg, said in a statement that he could not comment because of privacy concerns. But he said, “The U.S. government does everything and will continue to do everything it can on behalf of its citizens detained around the world who request our assistance.”

There had been widespread anticipation when news of the prisoner deal was first leaked by Iranian news services on Jan. 16 that Mr. Namazi would be among those freed. Some accounts asserted that Mr. Namazi was on the list, along with Amir Hekmati, a Marine veteran; Saeed Abedini, a pastor; and Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent.

Then Fars News, a service linked to the Revolutionary Guards, said Mr. Namazi’s reported inclusion was false, instead listing another Iranian-American, identified as Nosratollah Khosravi and an alternate name, Nasrollah Khosravi-Roodsari, who had never been reported as imprisoned and whose background remains mysterious.

Mr. Namazi’s attributes as a dual citizen may seem ideal for reconciliation between Iran and the United States. But friends and acquaintances say his background also worries the hard-liners who control Iran’s intelligence and security agencies, sensitive to what they view as influential Iranians poisoned by Western values.

“There are a lot of Siamaks out there in the Iranian diaspora,” said Farhad Alavi, a Washington lawyer who is a friend of Mr. Namazi’s. “I think arresting him was an effort to send a message.”

In the aftermath of the nuclear agreement that relaxed sanctions on Iran, which President Hassan Rouhani called the beginning of a new era with the outside world, many Iranians abroad were excited. Sensing a shift, they envisioned opportunities in what amounts to one of the world’s biggest untapped markets.

Even though the United States retains many restrictions on doing business in Iran, the nuclear agreement was still viewed among Iranian-Americans as a hopeful sign.

Mr. Namazi’s arrest has effectively deflated much of that optimism, acquaintances say, and is one low-cost way for conservatives to exert control.

“Siamak’s arrest has had a chilling effect on those members of the Iranian diaspora who had been thinking of returning to Iran to help the country’s development in the post-sanctions atmosphere,” said Bijan Khajehpour, Mr. Namazi’s former consulting partner and a cousin by marriage, now based in Vienna.

Saeid Golkar, a senior fellow of Iran policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a lecturer at Northwestern University, said he knew of many Iranian-Americans who had put off trips to Iran. Mr. Namazi’s arrest, he said, had sent a message that “the nuclear deal was a great deal but not for Iranian-Americans.”

There has been some speculation that Mr. Namazi’s captors might be seeking to implicate him in a corruption scandal indirectly linked to Crescent Petroleum, which has been entangled in a prolonged dispute with Iran over an unfulfilled gas contract.

Asked for comment, Crescent said in a statement that Mr. Namazi “was no longer an employee of the company at the time of his reported detention.”

Others have said Mr. Namazi played no role in Crescent’s dispute with Iran, which predated his employment.

Cliff Kupchan, an Iran expert who knows Mr. Namazi and is chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy in Washington, said Mr. Namazi’s troubles may signal Iran’s intent to keep using imprisoned Iranian-Americans as leverage.

“The kinds of people that particularly scare the Iranian government are members of the diaspora that are extremely well connected within Iran and could pose a threat to existing economic connections, and even to a real extent to political dynamics,” Mr. Kupchan said. “Siamak fits that like a wet T-shirt.”