Video Shows Siamak Namazi, American Businessman Held by Iran

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/world/middleeast/iran-siamak-namazi-video.html

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An Iranian-American businessman arrested in Iran a year ago was seen publicly for the first time Monday in a video posted online by the country’s judicial news service, which seemed to hint that he would be accused of espionage.

The video — a montage of anti-American-themed images that runs one minute, 12-seconds, and is set to dramatic music — showed the businessman, Siamak Namazi, his hands raised, along with his United States passport and United Arab Emirates resident identification.

The video also showed a seized American surveillance drone; images of Jason Rezaian, the reporter for The Washington Post who was accused of spying for the United States; and clips of American sailors shown kneeling in surrender positions when briefly detained by Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf last January.

The end of the video showed a photograph of Representative Ed Royce, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr. Royce was quoted as saying that Iran’s arrest of Mr. Namazi showed its “contempt for America.”

Mr. Royce’s representatives in Washington said he had no comment on the video.

It was not clear when the video, released by the Mizan News Agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, had been made.

But the timing roughly coincided with the first anniversary of Mr. Namazi’s arrest in Tehran, suggesting that formal charges were looming.

An international relations expert and business consultant with dual citizenship of the United States and Iran, Mr. Namazi is well connected in both countries and is an outspoken proponent of improving relations.

He had been a strategic planning executive at Crescent Petroleum, a privately owned Middle East energy concern, when he was arrested in Iran.

Mr. Namazi’s arrest appeared to be part of a broader crackdown by Iran’s hard-line security forces against Iranians with Western ties in the aftermath of the nuclear deal that President Hassan Rouhani reached last year with foreign powers, most notably the United States.

The deal restricted Iran’s nuclear work in exchange for relaxed economic sanctions on the country.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly warned Iranians to beware of what he has called nefarious American efforts to use the nuclear deal as leverage to corrupt Iranian society and subvert the Islamic revolutionary government in power since 1979.

The video showing Mr. Namazi came a few days after Muhammad Ali’s widow, Lonnie, wrote a letter imploring Ayatollah Khamenei to release Mr. Namazi and his father, Baquer Namazi, a former Iranian governor and a representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund. He was arrested in February.

Mr. Ali, a highly respected figure among the world’s Muslims, including those in Iran, had written to Mr. Khamenei asking him to release Mr. Rezaian.

In Iran, hard-line opponents of improving relations with the United States have focused on Iranian-Americans as a particular source of suspicion. The Iranian government does not recognize dual nationalities and treats foreigners of Iranian descent as Iranian citizens.

Mr. Rezaian, along with three other Americans of Iranian descent held in Iran, was freed in January in a prisoner exchange when the nuclear agreement took effect.

Obama administration officials acknowledged two months ago that they had provided $400 million in cash to Iran shortly after Mr. Rezaian and the others were freed. Administration critics, including Mr. Royce, described the payment as ransom.

Administration officials said the money was part of a separately negotiated settlement of an old dispute over undelivered military equipment that Iran had purchased before the 1979 revolution, which led to a break in relations.

But the timing of the payment has spurred speculation that the Iranians would now use Mr. Namazi and his father as bargaining leverage to win more disputed monetary claims against the United States.