Silence is never the answer when hostages are taken
Michael Rubin
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Word leaked on Monday that Iran had held Johan Floderus, a Swedish diplomat working for the European Union’s foreign service, for more than 500 days. The West kept his detention quiet so as not to disrupt diplomacy. Iran apparently seized Floderus as a chit to trade for Hamid Nouri, an Iranian national held in Sweden for his role in the 1988 massacre of nearly 3,000 prisoners.
Sweden once again disgraces itself by empowering dictatorship and discarding principle. The European Union member and NATO aspirant is not alone, however. Whenever Iran or any other rogue seizes a Western hostage, the playbook remains the same: Diplomats counsel silence from the victim’s family and friends on the logic that any spotlight could raise the value of the detainee and complicate release efforts.
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Western diplomats base such advice on a lie. They want silence not to win a hostage’s release but to sidestep the inconvenience that hostage represents to unrelated diplomatic ambition.
The demand for silence scares family members of victims and sets up a dynamic in which quiet buys diplomats or university administrators time while allowing the same officials to blame their own lack of progress on victims’ families when word inevitably leaks.
The lie is pernicious. The logic that silence keeps hostage value low is also false. Hostage-takers seize innocents because they already know who they are and what concessions they might bring.
Time matters. Suppressing news for months normalizes the disappearance and can even lead to tragedy, as was the case with murdered American hostage Bob Levinson.
The price of that silence is never worth it. President Barack Obama left Levinson behind to eliminate an obstacle to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal that, even if it had worked (and it did not), both had an expiration date and gave Tehran a free pass on delivery systems and its past nuclear weapons work. The same pattern repeats with President Joe Biden and Jamshid “Jimmy” Sharmahd.
Universities act in parallel. Princeton University urged graduate student Xiyue Wang to conduct research in Tehran, counseled him to remain after authorities seized his passport, and then sought to keep his case out of the limelight once Iran imprisoned him. Princeton’s apparent goal was to maintain access for its faculty and keep itself on the right side of the Iranian studies donors’ crowd. History now repeats with graduate student Elizabeth Tsurkov, word of whose detention by pro-Iranian forces in Iraq Princeton tried to suppress.
If the goal is to protect freedom and liberty for American citizens or permanent residents, then history shows volume and punishment is the best strategy. When Iranian radicals seized the American Embassy in Tehran nearly 45 years ago, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary leader, made expansive demands. In the end, while President Jimmy Carter unwisely paid some money, the cost of sanctions and isolation became too great for Iran to bear, and Khomeini backed down on most demands. The same was true in Xiyue’s case. Maximum pressure paid off. Contrast that with ransoms paid by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Obama: After each delivery of arms or cash, Iran simply seized more hostages.
Nor does this lesson apply only to Iran. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan retreated like a skittish dog when President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on Turkey’s steel industry to secure the release of Pastor Andrew Brunson.
In Lebanon, after Hezbollah kidnapped four Russian diplomats and killed one, the KGB responded by castrating a Shiite leader’s relative, delivering the parts, and then killing the relative. Hezbollah freed its remaining captives and never seized another Russian. That may not be American style, but with so many children of regime officials residing in the West, many of whom jaywalk or commit other infractions, opportunities for arrest are plentiful.
Fifteen years ago at a campaign event in Philadelphia, Obama said of Republicans, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” How ironic that today, when Iran brings a gun, Biden and his European partners wave cash. No wonder it is open season on Americans and Europeans worldwide.
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Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.