RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from Fox News — the article as it was filed.
For nearly six years, American conservationist Morad Tahbaz lived in what he described as hell inside Iran’s prison system. The worst four months were spent completely alone in a small cell, beneath a bright light that never went dark.
Tahbaz was held in Ward 2A of Iran’s Evin Prison, which he described as a high-security detention facility controlled by the intelligence branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
He was allowed out only twice a day for about 10 minutes and was forced to wear a blindfold whenever he left, Tahbaz told Fox News Digital. His weekly call with his wife lasted only a few minutes and was monitored so closely that an official interrupted whenever he spoke in English.
"This is probably the harshest and toughest imprisonment that any prisoner will go through," Tahbaz, who was finally released in September 2023, told Fox News Digital of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence detention facility inside Iran's Evin Prison.
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Tahbaz was living and working in Iran as a conservationist when authorities arrested him alongside several colleagues in January 2018. He had co-founded the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, which worked to protect endangered species including the Asiatic cheetah and Persian leopard.
One of the accusations leveled against him, Tahbaz said, was that he had trained lizards to spy on Iranian military installations for Israel.
"You can’t make this stuff up," Tahbaz said in the Zoom interview with Fox News Digital. "It just gives you an idea of the kind of narrative that this regime comes up with. They’ll come up with anything."
What began with interrogations in January 2018 turned into nearly six years of imprisonment for the Iranian American conservationist.
Now free and back in his home in the U.S., Tahbaz fears the war between the United States and Iran could make the Americans still held by Iran both more vulnerable and more valuable as negotiating assets.
"I do think the strikes in Iran will have an impact on the hostages’ situation and their circumstances," he said.
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Tahbaz said he spent his first two years inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence facility at Evin.
After his conviction, Tahbaz was transferred into the general prison population. He said his cellmates ranged from suspected ISIS members to former Iranian government ministers.
The isolation and physical conditions were accompanied by constant uncertainty.
"The uncertainty when you are a hostage is not like you think at the end of your sentence they’ll necessarily let you go," Tahbaz said. "They’ll just come up with another charge to keep you there for as long as you’re of value to them."
Tahbaz was released Sept. 18, 2023, with four other Americans in a Qatar-mediated agreement between Washington and Iran. The exchange also involved five Iranians held by the United States and the transfer of $6 billion in previously frozen Iranian funds into a restricted account for humanitarian transactions.
The negotiation brought Tahbaz home, but he believes Western governments have failed to establish consequences strong enough to stop Iran from detaining more foreign and dual nationals.
"This business of hostage-taking has been going on essentially since the beginning of the revolution," he said.
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"It will continue, in my opinion, as long as there is no deterrence," Tahbaz added. "None of the Western governments, in reality, have done anything significant about stopping this practice."
The issue returned to the forefront in July with the release of Dena Karari, a 53-year-old Iranian American from California.
Karari had been unable to leave Iran since December 2024 after authorities confiscated her passports. Her attorney said she faced allegations of espionage and collaboration with a hostile state. President Donald Trump announced in July that she had been allowed to leave and called the decision a "gesture of goodwill."
Karari was not continuously imprisoned, according to reporting about her case, but she remained under an exit ban and was repeatedly interrogated.
Her release offered relief during a widening conflict, but Tahbaz said dual nationals remain particularly vulnerable because Iran does not recognize their foreign citizenship.
"Iran doesn’t recognize any other nationality other than the Iranian," he said.
Authorities can develop a national-security case, secure a sentence and then preserve the prisoner for use in future negotiations, Tahbaz said.
"You’re condemned, and they pass sentence, and you’re in the system, and now you are a bargaining chip," he said.
The precise number of Americans currently imprisoned or prevented from leaving Iran remains unclear.
Reuters reported in March that at least six U.S. citizens or permanent residents were detained in Iran, including journalist Reza Valizadeh, businessman Kamran Hekmati and U.S. permanent resident Shahab Dalili.
Valizadeh, a former Radio Farda journalist, was sentenced to 10 years for allegedly collaborating with a hostile government. Hekmati was sentenced to two years for having visited Israel more than a decade earlier, according to his family. Dalili, who was arrested after traveling to Iran for his father’s funeral, was sentenced to 10 years for allegedly cooperating with a hostile government.
Advocates warned that escalating strikes could increase the risk that detainees would be harmed or used as leverage.
The State Department formally designated Hekmati, who has bladder cancer, as wrongfully detained in March.
Tahbaz said he believes three Americans remain in custody, although that number could not be independently confirmed. Some cases are deliberately kept private because families ...
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