State Perspectives on Iranian Hostage Taking

This transcript is from an event hosted by Stanford’s Program in International and Comparative Law, Stanford’s Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, and CSIS on October 24, 2024. Watch the full video here.

Mr. Weiner: Let me thank you all for coming and welcome you here to our symposium on, When States Take Hostages: Responding to Iran and Other Perpetrators. We’re pleased to see that you’re here and interested in joining us in discussing this vexing international and public policy problem. I wanted to kick off with just a very brief introduction to the event.

Our program today is co-sponsored by the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law here at the law school, as well as our friends from the Stanford Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. You’ll be hearing soon from leaders of the Iranian Studies program, Dr. Milani, and Jon Alterman from CSIS. Our program today consists of three separate sessions. We’ll be starting with a discussion that focuses on the policy aspects of the state hostage taking problem. This will be followed by a panel on the international law aspects of state sponsored hostage taking. And then during the lunch hour, I’ll be engaged in a conversation with the remarkable Jason Rezaian, who as many of you know is a Washington Post journalist who was abducted and taken hostage in Iran in 2014 and held hostage for 544 days. Before turning things over to my friend Jon Alterman from CSIS, I did want to take a moment to thank my colleagues here at Stanford and Stanford Law School in particular, who have done so much to make our program possible.

I’d like to start by thanking Monique Chao Norquist and Maria O’Neill from the Stanford Program Group. I’d like to thank Kerry Gao from our AV support team. And above all, I have to say something about Danny Sharp, who is a Stanford Law student. He came to me about a year ago with a cockamamie and harebrained idea of organizing an event on state sponsored hostage taking. I tried to tell him no and explain all of the reasons why that would be a bad idea. including the fact that it would be difficult to get esteemed panelists to participate in the event. He has proven me wrong. That there would be a lot of logistical headaches associated with it, I think I’ve proven myself right. But he was really the inspiration for all of this and he himself has shouldered just an extraordinary portion of the load in handling the administrative tasks.

Thanks to all of my Stanford colleagues, and with no further ado, I pass the podium over to Jon Alterman from CSIS who will be moderating our first panel today.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you very much, Allen, I want to echo Allen’s welcome to all of you. It’s a joy to work on this and it’s also a joy to be working again with Danny Sharp who before he was at Stanford Law School was absolutely the hub of everything we do with the Middle East Program at CSIS. I think the folks at Stanford Law School didn’t quite understand the black belt in organizing events that Danny had earned.

I’m just delighted to be here and to bring other colleagues out here. I’m also really delighted by this panel that brings together a number of very different, very complementary, very deep perspectives on this problem of state hostage taking. Abbas Milani, as I think everybody at Stanford knows, is that Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian studies here—just a remarkable scholar who understands the motivations and the operations of the Islamic Republic and the context in which they take place. My friend and colleague Dani Gilbert who I work with intensely on the CSIS Commission on Hostage taking and Wrongful Detention. She’s an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University, and when you talk about pioneers, Dani has been an intellectual pioneer, persuading political scientists that there is something intellectually important—in fact, vital—to understand about hostage taking and wrongful detention, and that the tools of political science can usefully be applied to understanding and ending this practice.

Tara Denham is the senior official for hostage affairs in the Canadian government. She is new to this, but unlike the rest of us, she has actual responsibility. Because she’s new, she doesn’t have to have a long list of accomplishments in this, which I’m afraid none of us do. And then on the screen is my friend, Abram Paley. He’s the Deputy Special Envoy for Iran in the State Department. Before that, he was the Middle East advisor to somebody named Kamala Harris. Not that he’s speaking for her, he’s speaking for the State Department, but I think the fact that he was in the White House is a sign of the confidence that people in the U.S. government put in Abram and the importance of his portfolio. Thank you all for joining us.

I thought we’d start with Abbas to just give us a sense of the context in which we see this kind of practice happening. How does the Islamic Republic engage with other countries? How does it feel it should engage with other countries? How does it think other countries engage with it? And why would that lead us to have any link between hostage taking and Iraq?

Dr. Milani: First of all, thank you all for coming. Thank you to the organizers, my colleagues here. I have to say that in all the years that I’ve been at Stanford, it’s almost 22 years, I’ve never been to a conference that was more clearly guided. From the moment you enter the law school, there are signs leading you to where you are. I felt like an idiot asking somebody, where is 290? They said, “Look at the sign.” And every street corner had a sign. It’s in his preparation, in every aspect of his preparation, he was really, truly remarkable.

On Iran, I have to say, I don’t think there is any country that we can find where hostage taking is an essential component of both their strategy and their tactics. And in preparation for this conference, I began reading some of what they have written in their academic journals, in their policy journals, and how they approach this. It is truly remarkable. I don’t think there is any country in the world who is as self-righteous about its right to take hostages at any time that it sees fit. And I’m going to give you some examples. And I also don’t know any other country where hostage taking has been an essential part of their policy. There is no other country that has as many instances of hostage taking, and I’ve added some of it up. The numbers are remarkable if you go back from the beginning.

One of the reasons that the task of everyone who’s trying to confront the regime is made difficult is because, sadly, it’s not. They have been rewarded for this wrong practice from day one. They have not paid the price they should have paid. If they had paid the price from the beginning, if they weren’t rewarded for their malfeasance, then we wouldn’t be talking about a regime that is absolutely, self-righteously, of the opinion that it can take hostages. And I can quote you Khamenei, I can quote you Khomeini, I can quote you judges, and I can quote you law professors who say it is our right, it is absolutely our right, to take these hostages.

It began with the taking of American diplomats. If the American government had made it clear that you are not allowed to do this, that you cannot be a member of the international community and take diplomats hostage, then I think they might have behaved differently. They began with that, and they politicized it, and they used it. There is much that is written about how the regime, Khomeini himself, used the hostage crisis to essentially consolidate clerical despotism in Iran. The Iranian 1979 revolution was clearly, unmistakably a revolution that was supposed to deliver democracy. Khomeini never once, in a hundred and twenty interviews he gave, mentioned the word wilayat al-faqih when in Paris. And that’s what they created, and they created that partly on the radical atmosphere begot by the hostage crisis.

I was just reading last night one of the memoirs of one of the main actors. He said Khomeini read every one of the declarations of the students himself, and corrected it, and amended it. So that’s how detailed he was involved from the beginning. And they used that to consolidate a clerical despotism that was despite everything they had promised. Then, they began taking Americans and Europeans hostage in the Middle East. The Iran Contra is a full account of it. They began to negotiate with the promise of help, as Rafsanjani says, with the promise of help in the release of hostages if you release some of the monies. The argument they made is that money was owed to us, and the Americans would not give it back to us, and the only solution we had was to take hostages. In one sense they were right, some of thee money was owed to them. Some of the money were being kept without legal basis. Abe Sofaer has written about this (a lawyer at the time in the State Department).

But the notion that if you keep our money, we are justified to take people hostage became essentially part of their plot. From the beginning, they were also taking Iranians hostage. We all talk about hostage taking of dual citizens or Westerners. The Iranian Jewish family, if one of them wanted to leave Iran, the rest of the family had to leave their passport in Iran. They had to stay in Iran. A Baha’i family had to stay in Iran. They were virtual hostages, I mean literal hostages. We don’t talk about the Iranians because, unfortunately, it seems like the life of Iranians is worth less than the life of dual citizens or Westerners.

Then they began a new policy. They began taking dual citizens, which was the lowest hanging fruit. They realized that they’re very easy to take, and they have added legal justification. The Iranian regime does not recognize dual citizenship. When these people go back to Iran, the Iranian regime feels that it has the right to arrest them. They could have arrested Jason for jaywalking. He’s an Iranian citizen. You, the American government, have no right to interfere in this affair. And they continued this process. With every country in the West, every country in Europe who has citizens or dual citizens taken hostage has negotiated with this regime, sometimes openly, sometimes secretly.

Sometimes the two parties running for a campaign competed with one another to making more concessions to the Iranian regime to get a better deal in terms of when to release the hostages. And Khamanei and Khomeini both have repeatedly said: “We have paid no price for this.” In fact, Iran has paid a remarkably high price, but they don’t count that as a price that they should put in their calculation. If you read the memoirs of Amaoui, he says, the Rafsanjani government figured that from 1979 to 1992, Iran has paid 400 billion dollars extra economic cost for the sanctions that were placed because of it.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you. Abram, that’s a remarkable tour d’horizon for you to work from, but you haven’t been dealing with this issue set for the last 40-some-odd years. You’ve been dealing with it for the last couple of years. How does what Professor Milani said shape what you see, and do you see things working on the current issues that’s a significant addition to what he said. Why is Iran doing this?

Mr. Paley: Great. First off, thanks very much for having me here. Unfortunately, I can’t be there in-person. I would have loved to see all the signs navigating me through Stanford, but sadly I’m here at the State Department. But still, thanks very much, Jon, to Stanford, to CSIS. I have to say, at the top, thanks for all the work that all of you have been doing on this really important issue. Despite the fact that I wasn’t able to be there in person, it was really important to me to join, and join what sounds like already is going to be a very interesting and important conversation to make sure that we are keeping this issue on the top of everybody’s radars as we are dealing with a full range of different issues.

Jon, to respond to your question and the initial comments: I’d say there’s a lot of shared vision and ground in what’s been described. I think that one of the key takeaways that I’ve been in this position since March of 2023 and been quite involved in some of these issues, including the release of our Americans last year, last September—which I think is part of the reason why I’m here—I think that we do see the regime in Tehran as both built around this approach to hostage taking, but also hostage taking fitting within the broader range of destabilizing actions that we have incredible concern about when it comes to Iran’s activities, both in terms of its domestic policies and how they treat their own citizens. Yes, they might view them as worth less than dual citizens or Americans or anybody else, but they’re still humans. Part of what we’re incredibly focused on is making sure that the world continues to pay attention to what Iran is doing to its own people. I think hostage taking also, as has been described, fits very much within the broader regional and global things that we are concerned about Iran doing, whether it’s support for terrorism or transnational repression or lethal plotting, you name it, you hear a lot from, the State Department, from me, from the U.S. government about all these concerns. And I think we can’t disconnect the strategy and tactics with which the Iranian regime pursues hostage taking as disconnected from these broader concerns we have. I think, in my time in this role, that’s the first big takeaway I have: It’s really important for all of us to view what Iran is doing with hostage taking as part of its broader approach to domestic and foreign policy, and our response needs to be geared to that.

The second bit of this that has been made very clear to me personally, both in this role and in other roles in this administration, is that this is an issue that the president, the secretary, the vice president, and many senior officials care phenomenally about—the safety and security of Americans is really a top priority from us. And that’s a talking point, you hear us say it a lot, I say it a lot. But, having sat in the rooms where key decisions are made and having seen the results bear themselves out, I can say very clearly that this administration cares deeply about keeping our Americans safe and, when they end up in situations, whether it’s in Iran or somewhere else, in getting them home. And that often involves very tough decisions that sometimes run counter to some of the other policies that we’re trying to accomplish. But this is a challenge that all governments face around the world.

Unfortunately, it’s not just Americans that Iran is taking hostage. It’s others from Europe, from Canada, from around the world. And this is something that we need to face together. But I think at the end of the day, clear commitment from the U.S. government to help keep our citizens safe is something that people have resoundingly seen from this administration and across administrations as well. Having worked in the State Department for some time, this is an issue that keeps on coming up, and it should keep our focus.

The third basket of things that I really hope we can dive into today, and then I’ll stop talking, but over the time that I’ve been focused on this in this role, the kind of reflections that I have, both in terms of how Iran approaches it—which I’m not really in a position to speak to—in terms of how the U.S. government focuses on it is: I think that we need to be focused—both as the United States, whether it’s the government, whether it’s academia, think tank community, everybody, impassioned citizens, people that have faced issues, people that have had loved ones held hostage before—this is an issue that needs to stay on the agenda. And that’s something that I’ve really focused on and that we’ve really focused on. As a key subset of that, I think it’s informing people about what the real risks are, whether it’s around the world, but also in Iran. We can all talk about both through history and also through policy and practice, our concerns about what the regime is doing.

But, one of the challenges that we really face is making that clear to Americans. We’ve got a lot of Americans living in Iran. We’ve got a lot of Americans traveling to Iran. As people that are in the room and on the panel know full well, they don’t always think that this is going to happen to them. In fact, they often think that this will not happen to them. Part of what I’ve tried to do, I think there’s a lot more work to do, but I think part of why discussions like these are so important is that it’s not just a certain subset of people that the Iranian regime, or frankly, other countries around the world will use to advance their own selfish interests. They’ll use whoever they can. When it comes to Americans there’s a lot of unfortunately rich ground for them to rely upon. Something that we’re trying to make very clear is that if you’re an American, you shouldn’t go to Iran. This is something that we say time and time again, but conversations like this where we can really delve into detail and then take our understanding of the situation, understanding of the problem, and then take away and have conversations with friends, family, loved ones and point out that this really is something, it’s not just a U. S. government talking point. It’s not just something that the secretary, the president, or the vice president says, but it’s something that we mean and something that we need to be very careful about.

The last thing I’ll say right here at the top is that, while obviously the U.S. government remains very focused on this, one of the key aspects of the way in which we approach this—and, it’s not just me, it’s obviously Roger Carstens, it’s others, Stephen from Roger’s team is there in the room, there are a lot of people in our government focused on this—but we think that it is incredibly important to work with the international community on this. Canada, and I’m sure we’ll hear more about it, has really been a leader in bringing countries together to make clear that this is just something that’s not acceptable. Iran needs to understand that there will be punishments for what it’s doing, that it’s not an acceptable practice, whether they write about it in their memoirs or everything else, and there will be significant consequences, both in terms of prestige, in terms of Iran’s role in the international community and multilateral fora, and other things. We’ve done some good work, with Canada’s leadership, with some of the efforts of my colleagues here at the State Department, and in the SPEHA, Roger Carson’s office, and others. They’re doing really great work. But, I think there’s a lot more that needs to be done by the international community, and both keeping this on the agenda and coming up with real tools and options for holding Iran accountable and making the regime feel that there will be punishments for this behavior that they continue to engage in.

Those are some initial comments, but I'm really looking forward to continuing this conversation with everybody. Thanks very much.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you, Abram. This, of course, is not just an Iran issue. I thought, Tara, can you help us understand: Why do states, in general, engage in this activity? What kind of spectrum of action do you see? How do you explain it? And Canada has an important initiative on arbitrary detention, what’s the Canadian assessment of why is this happening at all?

Ms. Denham: Thank you and I’ll echo the thanks for inviting me here today. I apologize because, like any good flight, I am on the verge of getting a cold. I’ve been trying to be very quiet until I can share my remarks. I’ve already learned something today. Danny is an excellent coordinator. So, congratulations to you, but really a big thanks to Stanford and CSIS for inviting me here.

Just a bit of framing and then I’d love to get into some of what Canada understands as the motivators as to why this happens. To give you context, it was mentioned, I just came into this role two months ago. It is a big responsibility. But this role was created in 2023. My predecessor, Julie Sunday was in this role. What I bring to this conversation, it was already mentioned that Iran and other actors are actually using hostage diplomacy alongside a lot of other destabilizing actions. A lot of the work that I’ve been doing over the last five to ten years is around the threats to international peace and security, and around some of these hybrid threats. I’ve been doing work on transnational repression, foreign interference, and disinformation. In terms of bringing that understanding of: How do you build international coalitions and try to increase the cost? This is now what I bring into this role as SOHA, and to build on the conversations and the discussions that the team has been having. It’s already been mentioned that Canada’s been working on this for a number of years, and it really stems, unfortunately, from our experience with the two Michaels when they were taken hostage, arbitrarily detained, by China.

I’m going to reflect on what are some of the key takeaways, or where does Canada currently see this in terms of some of the motivations for states to do this. First and foremost, when we’re talking, I’m going to focus on state-to-state hostage taking, between and using it against other states. It’s an important distinction, but I want to be very clear that there is huge motivation to use leverage against another state. It’s being used now as a part of the diplomatic toolkit, and that is the unacceptable nature. That is completely unacceptable, to use people as pawns to leverage against states. There were no actions that these individuals took. The calculations were based solely and completely on the ability of a state actor to use one of the citizens of another country to exert influence and try and change either a foreign policy decision, trade negotiations, any of these vast array of tools which normally we would use, diplomatic interactions, to exert influence. That’s where this action is completely abhorrent and where we want to continue to increase the understanding that this should not be acceptable in a diplomatic toolkit.

The second piece that we’ve really looked at, and I thank Dani and others that have been doing a lot of research on this, and I’m excited to hear more about it, but it’s also the calculation of: Who is targeted? We can all agree that there is a calculation that’s made, and there, one of the groupings has already been mentioned, but I would put it into three: There’s one grouping that we would say is around journalists, human rights activists, you have academics. These are individuals that by nature are exploring, investigating, seeking out truth, doing research and studies in other countries. Because of the nature of the work, the other state could actually target them and very easily put the facade of espionage over this type of activity by doing research. We’ve seen this repeatedly. There’s one grouping of individuals that you could see as a higher risk.

Another grouping of individuals would be the high-profile individuals—businesspeople; we’ve seen some, unfortunately, celebrities; sports individuals, that has happened with U.S. citizens. This is, again, on the calculus being that with somebody that is very known or has a public persona, there can be a high level of public pressure. So again, the first calculation, to exert influence, the second being this will have a high level of pressure on the government to find a resolution and therefore target states will build that in.

The third category, which has already been mentioned, is the detention of dual nationals. Dual nationals are also at high risk because again, it was already mentioned by Professor Milani that the states will actually refuse consular access, because they won’t recognize the dual citizenship of those individuals. As soon as you refuse consular access, of course as a country that has been the target of this behavior, it increases once again our concern for our citizens, our concern to resolve the issue.

You can see here just through those categories, and that’s how we group them, that while it is completely unjustified, and these are hostages taken by foreign states, it is not random. There is a calculation that’s put in place to exert leverage and to use to target individuals that would be at higher risk. Because at the end of the day, when you look at that calculus, it is a low cost, for the country that’s going to use this type of tactic, and it’s an extremely high cost to the individuals, to their families, to their loved ones, and to the target state. The calculus would be for them to continue to use this tool.

This brings me to my final point, which is what we’re doing a lot of the work on. How do we then reverse the calculus? How do we change the calculus? Which is where a lot of conversations are. Some of our thinking, and again, this is the exciting part about this policy area is that we don’t have all the answers, and this is why it’s so important to have these conversations, because we have to keep thinking through the calculus. But where are we right now? The recognition that we can’t do this alone, that we do have to work with international partners, with the international community. When you actually bring more and more countries together to speak up against this and to speak against this type of behavior, you increase the pressure on that country. Countries at their core, they do care about their international reputation. They may not care about their international reputation in certain countries, but they care about their reputation with other countries that they work with. You have to increase that volume, increase the countries you’re working with—not just Western countries, but countries all around the world, so that you can bring as many countries as possible together to speak about that.

This brings us to the Initiative on Arbitrary Detention, which Canada launched in 2021. We now have 78 signatories to the declaration. You can imagine at first, you’re getting countries that are more like-minded that are signing onto the declaration. As you move through that, in diplomacy, you need to consciously think about expanding: Who is a signatory? As I mentioned, you need to get more and more countries from more and more parts of the world to sign that and stand up, that it’s unacceptable. That’s a lot of our focus now, is that we can actually get more countries, more diversity, raise that awareness, and ideally, you build that momentum to move into the space where you’re trying to change international norms.

You’re trying to make this unacceptable, but you must build that over time. The last piece is the declaration. In a lot of our work now, which is why I’m so excited to hear the next panel, which is looking at the international legal frameworks. You build the declaration, you build the international commitments and calling out this type of behavior, but we have to have a very real understanding of: What the international frameworks are, where are the gaps? How can they be leveraged? What should be the changes and our new proposals to the international frameworks? Because then it’s about accountability, and that’s where I think a lot more work must happen, and I can speak more about that in other comments.

But again, that’s some of the calculations and where we’re trying to focus our work at this time.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you very much. I thought, Dani, because you’ve thought systematically and broadly about this. Of course, there are countries other than Iran. There are countries like Russia, countries like China who’ve engaged in this. How much similarity in motivation do you see, and how much similarity do you see in the cost calculation? And therefore, how much similarity can there be in a response that focuses, as Professor Milani, suggested on just making the costs unacceptable? Is it your sense that’s the most difficult part or promising way to address this broader phenomenon?

Dr. Gilbert: Thank you so much, Jon. I just want to echo everyone else. Thank you so much for having me here today as part of this incredible panel and event. Thank you to Danny for all this amazing organization of such an important topic, and it’s really gratifying to be part of this conversation.

Hostage taking is an ancient crime. It dates back to the earliest possible written records of war. It’s in the code of Hammurabi. It’s in the Bible. It was big in the Roman Empire. Abbas spoke very compellingly about the importance of going back to 1979, but I would say it started long before that. Over that time, perpetrators learned that it was an effective, asymmetric tool that they can use to get leverage over much more powerful adversaries. The form that hostage taking has manifested in has changed dramatically over time. A long time ago there was kidnapping, and then there were hundreds of years of piracy, and then in the 1960s and 70s we saw a lot of airplane hijackings and embassy sieges in what are called barricade hostage takings.

In the `80s and `90s it was back to kidnapping again, and then over the last decade it has evolved into this new form that I would call hostage diplomacy or hostage taking in state-to-state relations, which is when governments use their criminal justice system to take foreigners hostage. It is this hybrid sort of leverage where they are using the tools of hostage taking, which is imposing captivity to use as leverage to make someone else take, and it’s playing on the way that, especially Western democracies, behave in the international system, which is a respect for sovereignty, a respect for the international rule of law. It is using precisely that respect against countries like the United States and Canada and others. For perpetrators across these different types, hostage taking has long been a rational, strategic behavior. They do it because it works. And in the case of state perpetrators specifically, they use it because it is a way to get what they want. That doesn’t risk going to war. There are not a lot of ways that a state like Iran can get things from the United States, but taking our citizens has demonstrated for a long time that it’s one way to do that.

In the particular case of state hostage taking, perpetrators often target democracies. It is this unique confluence of attention to civil liberties. It matters when a citizen is detained unjustly. Free press, which contributes to increased attention and then maybe political pressure on a government. Democratically elected leaders who then face pressure. It’s a unique combination in ways that it hits democracies where it hurts the most. There are, as Jon was asking, some really important differences between state and non-state perpetrators of hostage taking even though this dynamic of coercive detention for leverage is common across the different forms.

With non-state actors who commit hostage takings, in recent years that’s typically been in the form of kidnappings. That is by far the majority of hostage taking violence around the world. It happens all over the world. It’s thousands, if not tens of thousands, of cases a year. It’s dramatically underreported. Most hostage takings are kidnapping for ransom cases. It presents an information problem for target states. Do you know if the hostage is alive? Do you know where they are being held? Do you know what it will really take to get that person home? And governments and families and companies have resorted to lots of different ways of trying to get their hostages home, and it includes, most notably, concessions. Most hostages come home when a ransom is paid. Kidnapping is a largely non-lethal crime. But the possibility of a military rescue was also plausibly on the table in some cases. That the United States government could send in Delta Force or the Navy SEALs to go after a hostage taking band. It’s very rare, it’s very difficult, it’s not often successful, but that is on the table.

When a state holds a hostage, that’s simply not on the table. In 1980, the U.S. government tried to send in a rescue force, Operation Eagle Claw, to rescue the hostages held in the embassy in Iran. It was an enormous failure. The mission did not work. There was a helicopter crash. No one was rescued as part of that mission, and it inspired the birth of Joint Special Operations Command in the failure of this rescue mission. In the interim, the government is not trying to send in those kinds of rescue missions to bring back Americans who are held in Evin prison in Tehran or in Lefortovo outside of Moscow.

With state actors, the problem is instead escalation. Typically, where the hostage is held. Sometimes they’re even getting consular visits. They show up with news cameras in their face. You know if they’re alive. You know where they are. But the question is how can you get them back without resorting to war, and what kind of costs can governments impose on other actors in the international system in a world where countries respect each other’s sovereignty? It’s very difficult to impose costs on other states short of war. The policy options are very different when it comes to state hostage taking. Things like concessions are not off the table like they might be with a terrorist kidnapping. There’s no legal barrier in the United States to doing the equivalent of paying a ransom to a state or making prisoner swap concessions and things like that.

It becomes a question of thinking about how governments like the United States, like the Canadian government and others can impose costs in an international system where it’s difficult to impose those costs. That means both trying to punish perpetrators. in a way that doesn’t make it impossible to get current hostages home and advertising that other countries who are not currently taking hostages will face costs if they try to get into the hostage business.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you very much. It’s a very helpful way to frame the issue. One of the potential ways to address that equation that you’ve laid out is through collective action, and Tara talked a little bit about this arbitrary detention initiative that Canada has put forward. How does Canada think about collective action—what it can do, the kinds of situations where it’s most helpful, the kinds of collective consequences that like-minded countries should seek to impose? But equally, how should we think about like-mindedness in this issue? Who should be part of our club?

Ms. Denham: There are many clubs. Let’s start first with the Declaration on Arbitrary Detention. As I said initially, this is the strategy to get as many countries on board to actually declare or to condemn this type of activity. This is wanting to have more and more countries stand up and say that they do not agree with this. If you’re signing a declaration to say that you do not agree with it, you’re also signing a declaration that you will not conduct it. This is the intent behind trying to shift global norms is to try and get more and more countries.

Then we’ve also done a lot to work beyond the declaration. You try and push into different spheres. We need to push beyond the declaration, which has, as I said, tried to get a more and more diverse group of countries. But in the multilateral sphere, you’re trying to work with different groupings. Within the UN system, you actually want to have a conversation in the UN system. It’s very complicated because, of course, Russia and Iran and China are all there. But the benefit there is that you’re having the conversation, and they have to hear the conversation. You’re getting more and more of the countries that have signed a declaration to also be in the room and have that conversation.

This comes to the point, and again, the direct correlation of cost can sometimes be difficult to figure out. But by those perpetrators actually seeing more and more countries stand up and speak against it, they can see also some of what they may consider to be some of their closer alliances actually condemning this type of action. That’s where you’re wanting to have the conversation in the UN systems as well. We’ve done a lot of work to bring it into the G7. This is when you’re bringing it into some of the closest allies. These would be different groupings where you then think about when there are certain events that happen or if we face hostages that have been taken, who can we count on to potentially take joint action? How can that actually play out? This is really important for Canada to think through because not all states have the same influence and leverage in the international system. It’s clear that the U.S. has different leverage, all of our G7 countries have different leverage.

For Canada, we are often referred to as a middle power. We don’t have relations with Iran. We don’t have assets. We have already sanctioned Iran. We don’t have a lot of leverage. We have to expand that negotiating space by working through: Who are the other countries that will stand with us when we are faced with this? What leverage do they potentially have? You’re continuing to expand those close alliances and trying to push forward: What could collective action look like? Who will be there when collective action is required? That sort of gives you this onion, peeling back the layers of the international system, which is why you have to engage multilaterally with all of the countries. The declaration, which you try to expand and have more countries stand with you, moving in and using that to start to identify: Who are the allies that will stand with you, and what are the leverages that they have?

This is when you’re thinking, for Canada, and for a lot of countries, collective response is the only way we can do this. We’ve already spoken about the huge cost on the target state and we don’t all have the same levers. and so, the only way we can move through this is to actually do collective response. That’s how we see the value of the collective response and needing to be prepared for calling upon those relationships to explore more and more what those collective actions could be, and to increase those costs.

Dr. Alterman: Abram, can I ask you to think through this collective response piece. Tara pointed out that the United States is a great power. There’s often been a perception that much of our Iran policy has tended toward unilateralism, but to be fair, there’s been a major multilateral component to it—the JCPOA being just one example. When Tara talks about a multilateral response, how do you put together a bilateral piece and a multilateral piece? What is a multilateral piece insufficient to do? Where is it a necessary complement to the bilateral piece?

Mr. Paley: Thanks for that question, Jon. I couldn’t agree more with Tara that the multilateral piece is incredibly important. From the broad level, the United States has been incredibly supportive of this effort, we think that there’s a lot more to do and we’re working hand-in-hand with Canada to move forward on this within the broader context, and others would speak in a lot greater detail there. Getting to your question, and especially looking at it from the Iran angle, there’s certainly a lot of overlap here.

There are some interesting things that I would both add and focus on here. We think that multilateral action on this is incredibly important. Both to raise the stakes, to keep it on the agenda, and to make clear that it’s not acceptable behavior. The more countries that are signing on to this declaration, the more countries that are saying: “Look, this is not just a Western concern, it’s not just a European concern, it’s not just a North American concern. This is a concern of the globe, not just with Iran, but with everyone.” That’s great.

That what’s very interesting to me and where we need to both do more work on the policy space, but also need to get good ideas from scholars, think tank, others outside of government that are thinking about this, is: What other tools do we have? The symbolic signals that can be sent from multilateral space have a huge impact. We see that not just in hostage taking, but in other aspects of our national security approach to Iran and other countries. But there are costs that can be conveyed from multilateral space as well.

We’ve thought and we’ve done a lot, including during this administration on joint sanctions actions. Those are very meaningful when they come from broader groups of countries. That does wake Iran up, stepping outside of the hostage taking domain, but for other actions, over the last couple of weeks. Both we, the EU, the G7, and others have taken actions together to make clear that what Iran is doing in terms of, say, its support for Russia and everything else is not acceptable. Some of the things that Iran has long relied on in terms of commercial air flights to Europe, other things, will not continue, and it will not be business as normal if Iran continues to do this behavior. In the hostage taking context, there’s more multilaterally that we can be doing to say, “Look, it’s not going to be business as normal if you keep on doing this.” Like you mentioned, Jon, the bilateral context is also one that is incredibly important when it comes to all of this.

At the end of the day, as a government, we’ll continue to do all this work to figure out how to deter, how to stop, how to make sure that hostage taking is not accepted as an international practice. But at the same time, we do have this competing dynamic with making sure our citizens are safe, which I kicked off with. It’s not just the United States, but it’s all governments. It’s incredibly hard, and they have to make tough choices when it comes to all of this, and the more information sharing we can do with other governments as they are working through what are sometimes incredibly sensitive and incredibly difficult decisions that they’re all making, but having those discussions. That’s something that we obviously do, but just making that more of the norm when we’re working through some of these issues, is incredibly important. Because sometimes it’s just assumed that certain countries don’t have particular levers, but really when we’re getting into this space—and I really liked how Dani framed it—in terms of, yes, there’s war, and that’s a tool that we have. A lot of what we’re talking about here, obviously, on the panel, is options less than war.

When it comes to that space, countries that you might not think have leverage, especially when we start thinking of novel tools, especially when you think of countries that have, say, diplomatic relations with Iran—in a way that we don’t, Canada doesn’t, others don’t—there are small things like downgrading relations, closing an embassy, things like that—preventing citizens from traveling—they’re basic things that might not impose the same cost as war, but they are cumulative and signal to Iran that it’s not business as normal. Obviously, there’s always cost/benefit to all of these different things.

If we’re working collectively to say, “Hey, the United States can do X. That can generate leverage. Other countries can do Y, and that generates leverage. We’re working together to say that this is all because Iran continues to engage in hostage taking.” That’s really effective. That’s the ongoing conversation that we have, and it rounds out the really wonderful efforts that Canada is leading in terms of engagement in the multilateral space, because we have to do this collectively. We don’t think that we can go alone, and we think that it’s not great when we and others go it alone, so this is what we’re trying to do. But obviously it is a work in progress. Out of today’s discussions and other engagements and writing and everything else, we think we have good ideas, but there are a lot more ideas out there potentially to think of more of these costs that can be applied both bilaterally multilaterally.

Dr. Alterman: Wonderful. Thank you. Just for people in the audience, if you have a question, I’m told that’s what the magic QR code is for, and it’ll show up on the iPad here. I wanted to ask Abbas: People have talked a lot about the utility of multilateral engagement. What kinds of multilateral efforts do you think would have the greatest impact on the Iranian calculus in this activity?

Dr. Milani: Thank you. The Iranian regime understands one thing very clearly. It understands credible power. It also understands something else very clearly. It understands empty bluster. It doesn’t pay attention to the second. It is very careful to avoid the first. Every time there has been a serious, global, concentrated, collective message sent to Iran, it has backed up.

Every time they have said all options are on the table and the regime knows that nobody means that, they have laughed it off. If you’re going to put pressure on them, you need to have credible global pressure. We talk about collective global response; we must be realistic. This regime knows. I can quote you verbatim from Khamenei, Khomeini, when they talk about these things, “They talk about all these things, but they’re all after their private political game. Political parties are after fighting one another.” Mitterrand was working behind the scenes to make sure that he released the hostages and was offering them a bigger reward. That’s how they navigate these things.

They don’t even believe that the West, individual countries, can come up with a collective response. There wasn’t a collective response in this country to the hostage crisis. We know about the infamous October surprise. These are the realities that they know about. They publicly talk about how they can maneuver, how politicians in a democracy are worried about the next election, and they’re willing to make concessions.

If there is an international collective effort that makes sense to the Iranian regime as credible, now they realize that their support for Hezbollah, their support for Hamas is going to cost them. They’re not going to be able to fly to Europe. You can see that they’re more docile now. They’re more timid now than they’ve ever been.

Credible collective action works; empty or lofty ideals, they work around.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you. We got a question from the audience which is most appropriately directed at our government employees who may want to duck it. I’m going to put it out and you can decide if it’s outside of your lane. The question is: Does Russia’s growing relationship with Iran, as well as Russia’s growing relationship with China, play a role in the lack of international cohesion on taking hostages? There seems to be a lot of tension between East and West.

I know neither one of you has clear points to talk about that. So I offer it, but I don’t insist on it. Abram! Go ahead.

Mr. Paley: I’ll jump in. Why not, right? I alluded to this before, but this is something that we’re incredibly concerned about. We’re incredibly concerned about Iran’s growing relationship, especially, with Russia. There are things that we can learn from both how we’re rallying partners and allies to respond to this and how we are sending these credible signals, threats, and also punishments to Iran for how behavior is expanding and how these relationships are expanding in ways that run counter to the international community’s values, norms, and everything else. While it is probably a longer term question—although I would say, as a non-expert, all of those countries are engaged to differing degrees in hostage taking in ways that has hurt U.S. citizens and in ways that we’re incredibly concerned about—but putting that aside, when it comes to the expanding relationship with Iran and Russia, we’ve been very vocal, as the United States but also as the international community, we think that it’s concerning. Not because they’re becoming friends, but because they are doing things that run counter to international norms. We have been very clear, and Europe in general has been very clear, that Iran providing ballistic missiles to Russia to attack Ukraine runs counter to everything that we hold dear as the international community. That’s why we took very decisive action after that occurred. That’s why the EU and the E3 and others took decisive action. It’s been made very clear to the new administration in Tehran that we’re going to continue to do things like that.

This gets back to, “How can we have the same type of collective, specific, credible, both threat but also response to hostage taking?” in the same way. I have some of my own ideas, it’s something that we’re working on, but this is exactly what we’re talking about. We need to make clear that behavior, regardless of who’s doing it, that runs counter to what the rest of us think is the normalized behavior in the international community is important. And to continue to call people out when they are engaging in this behavior.

There’s a lot more that can be done and would certainly agree with the previous comments that these actions have to be credible, they have to be serious, they have to be well thought through, and we have to follow up on them as the international community. When you get into those type of dynamics, it’s often hard to come up with a meaningful thing. If this was an easy problem to solve, we would have wiped it off the earth, we’re talking about how it’s an ancient practice and everything else. It’s a long-standing process. We need to come up with more elaborate and specific ways to deal with it.

The last thing, just to respond to one of the previous comments, yes, certainly everybody pays attention to domestic politics, be it in the United States or in other countries and everything else. That’s why it’s incredibly important for all of us, including the U.S. government, and we’ve gone a long way in trying to do this. Obviously, we still have work to do, but in making this a nonpartisan and bipartisan issue, these types of issues are so important to say, “Let’s separate domestic politics from this.” This is something that affects Americans, all Americans. This is something that affects the global community, all the global community. It’s not just about U.S. or Canadian or European domestic politics—or frankly, Iranian domestic politics. It’s a global issue. There are some issues including ones that are in my portfolio that are very clearly nonpartisan, bipartisan issues. I know all of us that are here at this conference believe this, but the more we can collectively do to make this a nonpartisan, bipartisan issue, it’s incredibly important. I’ve focused on that during my time here, and I know that there are others in our government that feel very strongly about that. I know Roger Carstens, our Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, feels very strongly about that as well. That’s just in response to some of the previous comments. It’s a really important point.

Ms. Denham: Sure. I’ll just add in—completely agree with what was said. In terms of that bigger picture, and of course, the concerns about Iran and Russia and China and others becoming closer and aligning on various issues, there is such a concern right now on the general pushback against the international rules based system and the international norms that exist. We’re seeing it, and I started by saying that, but we’re seeing it over and over again. Hostages is one, but there’s many tactics that are now being pushed as acceptable. We need to, what you’re seeing is more and more countries—and again, as I noted, we can’t just be the G7—we have to push beyond, but we have to be very loud. Because the pressures right now on that international system are really strong.

There’s a lot of courtship of countries. You have Iran and Russia and China coming together, but then they’re actively trying to court more and more countries in different regions of the world. And this is where that augmented pressure is really coming from. That’s where you’re seeing a real concerted effort on multiple issues. Hostages being one. foreign interference being another, transnational repression. These are very insidious and dangerous tactics that are being used to target our populations. I completely agree on having to move past politics. In Canada, we are in a foreign interference inquiry. Regardless, these issues will cross the political boundaries. At the heart of it, Canada is a very multicultural country. We have to think about how our citizens who have links all over the world, the threats continue to expand on our citizens. We’re far past a world where you can try and eliminate those threat vectors. They’re everywhere. We need to think about how can we actually work in a different way because the way we actually work as a country and protect our citizens needs to evolve at the same time. I just wanted to add that to the comments. Thank you.

Dr. Alterman: We’re coming close to time. But I do want to ask a question that is both difficult and almost philosophical, which is what success looks like.

There’s a way with a lot of government challenges that you have successes, but if you’re focused on the policy, it’s a sign that your policy is failing or is interpreted to fail. I was giving a talk yesterday at Carnegie Mellon and it came on the formulation that there was no period when Americans would say we had a successful U.S. strategy toward the Middle East. We’ve had successes, but there’s something about issue sets that if you’re working on it, it’s a sign you’re not winning. How should we think about what success looks like? What should we take as, well, we haven’t gotten a shutout, but we’re making progress? What represents progress? What should we take as good enough, even if we haven’t completely solved the problem? Dani, I’m going to start with you.

Dr. Gilbert: Great. Thank you, Jon. There are four different successes in this space and they are more or less related. I look forward to hearing what people think about this. The first success is getting people home. The second success is getting people home faster, or at a lower cost for the government and to society. A third success is that this tactic doesn’t spread. And a fourth success, which is the hardest one, is getting Iran and Russia and other current perpetrators of this tactic to stop doing it or to do it less.

How do we do that? There are really different approaches to each of these different parts of the process. In a lot of the recent cases, certainly of Americans or dual national American citizens who have been held in places like Iran and like Russia, we knew what the deal was right from the start. Whatever these countries were demanding is ultimately what they got years and years later after someone like Jason Rezaian sat in prison, sometimes in solitary confinement, languishing, waiting for these deals to get them back. That really raises questions for us. It’s not like kidnap for ransom cases where you negotiate the price down. These prices end up being what the deal is. Controversially, a lot of these states are using it to get back what they claim—was theirs that was taken. I know that the government officials on this panel might not want to comment on that, but it’s typical to get back a prisoner of their own or money that they feel was taken from them, and that is always the demand and that is ultimately the price that is paid.

We need to face that and think about how that might relate to getting people back faster, thinking about how we deter other countries from adopting this or punishing current offenders. I’m really glad that the next panel is about law with lawyers because I feel like in this space, I am often saying, “I am not a lawyer.”

I am not a lawyer, but it strikes me that there are two distinct international legal concepts at play here that are conflated and traded back and forth. Clarity is really important in this space. Again, I owe this to Jason Rezaian and to a legal scholar named Beatrice Lau that we’re talking about arbitrary detention on one hand and hostage taking on the other. These are different international legal concepts. One is about how someone was detained, maybe why they are detained, and the conditions of their trial. Whereas hostage taking is about the purpose of holding someone to get something else in exchange. One of the things that’s really important for this international cooperation is clarity about which of these terms we mean when we mean it, so that hopefully we can draw on these different international legal concepts. Again, I am very eager to hear what the lawyers think.

Finally related to success, and this relates to the point that Abbas made about credible threats, is that the flip side of credible threats is credible assurances. Do states like Iran or Russia or others know that if they stop doing this that they won’t face punishments anyway? You have to actually make that distinction quite clear if you are trying to coerce someone to do something that they’re not already doing.

Ms. Denham: I would agree, I like the four: Get them home, home faster, lower cost, doesn’t spread and stop doing it. I would put them in reverse though, because I want them to stop doing it.

That’s the end state, but that would be a sign of success. I agree, the research does show that at the end of the day, the deal is what the original deal was. Success would also be, and this is coming back to the purpose of the multilateral and working with other countries, we have to change the deal. Because a country like Canada doesn’t have those levers. Usually what they’re asking for is that we can’t meet the deal. The question is can we change the deal in a way that is reliable, that we can count on our partners so that it doesn’t take six years of somebody sitting in prison, that we have been able to secure a deal where we use the levers of our allies in other countries to help us find a solution. That would be another sign of success.

The other one I would add—I don’t know if it’s a success; it’s a success in our work, I just wish we didn’t need it—I think we have to get way better at supporting the victims and their families and their loved ones. We’re not there. We spend a lot of time; we want to meet with individuals and hear from their experiences. I wish we didn’t have to, but I think there’s a lot more we have to do during and after the fact of reintegration and the support for families which isn’t there. Thanks.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you. Abbas, did you want to come in on this?

Dr. Milani: Success in one sense is very simple: Make a situation where countries like Iran no longer take hostages. Ending the hostage taking as an instrument, to me, would be a success. But it’s very much easier said than done, because I don’t know about the motives in China or Russia or other countries that have taken, or when Genghis Khan took, hostages, but I know what their motives are. All you must do is read what they say, believe what they say. They say: “For us, hostage taking is a form of deterrence.” They say: “For us, hostage taking is a form of ameliorating injustice.” Rezaee, commander of the IRGC for 20 years, says: “We can solve all of our problems. Just take 20 Americans hostage, they’ll come and give us a billion for each.” That’s the mentality you’re fighting in this regime. To think of this regime as a normal regime, to me, will not get us to the solution.

The first step to finding a solution to this is understanding the nature of this regime that is sui generis. It does not believe in international law if it does not serve its purpose. They say it. All you have to do is read it and believe that’s how they approach it. International law, international finance, everything is okay so long as it serves their purpose. A fatwa on nuclear deal is okay, so long as it serves their purpose to continue their nuclear program. Today, they openly say: We can change that fatwa tomorrow. Believe that’s the insignificance of fatwa on even the most important issue, let alone on the issue of taking innocent people hostage.

Dr. Alterman: Abram, you get the last word. 

Mr. Paley: Great. I know we’re over time, so I’ll be quick. Considering especially the last comments when we talk about success, I did like the four points that were laid out. The last one, from my personal view, we might broaden a little bit and not have it just be that these states aren’t doing this, but that it’s not happening.

The reason that I say that is, a big part of it and a lot of what we’ve talked about, and it sounds like we’ll talk about in other sessions, is what can we do to punish these countries? What can we do to change their behavior and everything else? But then to the most recent comments and, what we’ve talked about before, it’s: If they’re not going to change their behavior, what are other things that we can do to stop this from happening?

A key piece of that is education of our citizens. It’s something that I spend a lot of time on and need to spend more time on in terms of raising awareness of these concerns and everything else. Especially in the unfortunate world that we live in right now where this is still happening. We certainly need to keep on doing all the things to stop it from happening and punishing governments when they decide to do this and use it for their own advantage, but also just continuing like this, an important conference. Whenever we can just say, look, this is a real thing. Don’t go to Iran because you’re probably raising your probability of getting taken hostage and generating all these other things and problems that we just talked about. That’s a key piece of it. I would just insert that as a foray for something else but otherwise think this conversation is doing exactly just that and really appreciated the opportunity to join everybody today.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you so much, Abram. Thanks to all the panelists for joining me. Thank you for forbearing a policy panel when actually you’re interested in the next panel on law. Hopefully, we framed some of those discussions in a helpful and constructive way. I want to apologize to the people who sent in awesome questions. We just could not make it all work with the time we had, but I hope that we can continue some of those discussions over our break, and we’ll reconvene in 10 minutes. Thank you very much.