Why American Mothers Returned Empty-Handed?

After the three American mothers visited Iran and met their children held captive in Tehran, Iran’s minister of intelligence asserted, after a cabinet meeting, that the permission to the mothers was a “humanitarian gesture,” while announcing that Ahmadinejad’s administration was willing to swap the hikers, if its conditions were met.

In his remarks, minister Heydar Moslehi stressed that the American hikers, Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal, who had strayed into Iran from neighboring Iraq 9 months earlier were spies, saying, “there is not doubt that the three Americans are spies and there is no discussion about a swap, but we are doing this because of the humanitarian beliefs of the Islamic republic of Iran and have taken the initiative on these issues.”

While Moslehi apparently ruled out a swap over the hikers in one part of his remarks, in another he suggested just he opposite, saying, “Our expectation is that Americans who claim to be humanitarian should look at our humanitarian gesture so that we can come to the point of a discussion of whether a swap can take place or not.”

The mothers of the three American hikers held in Iran flew into Tehran and met their adult children last week in Esteglal Hotel (the former Hilton), close to Evin prison where they are being held. The meeting was initially held in the presence of the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, whose country is the caretaker of US interests in Iran as the US and Iran broke off relations in 1979 over the Iranian take over of the American embassy in Tehran and the detention of its embassy staff for some 444 days. The family meeting lasted a few hours and the meeting was widely covered by the international and US media.

After the meeting the mothers left Iran for Dubai on their way to the US. On her arrival in the US, the mother of one of the detainees Cindy Hickey told reporters that they had requested the release of their children but did not know what happened.

Why Empty Handed?
Even though the American mothers returned empty handed, the events of the past two weeks, even before the swap remarks of Iran’s chief spy, indicate that secret talks were being held between Iran and Western parties at some level over the political kidnappings and release of detainees.

The release of Majid Kakavand, the Iranian convict held in France and the announcement of the release of French teacher Clotilde Reiss in Tehran, and then the release and return to Iran of Iranian agent Ali Vakili in France (one of the assassins of Iran’s last prime minister Shahpour Bakhtiar) all indicate that Iran’s security and diplomatic machinery was busy working on swapping its foreign captives for Iranian detainees outside Iran.

The political picture began to emerge on Friday when, after the American mothers met with their detained children in Tehran, two Iranian nationals (Ahmad Barazande and Ali Abdolmaleki) who had been held in Iraq by US forces, were released.

The question that still hovers in political circles though is that if this is indeed the case, then why did the American mothers return empty handed? The answer may lie in a story published by a pro-government website, Asre Iran, which predicted that the American captives would soon b e released.

The article wrote, “What may weaken this swap is that there are still other Iranians in US prisons and the US has till now not done anything for their release.”
 
Prior to the recent suggestion of a swap by the intelligence minister, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jaafari Dolatabadi had told Iran’s official news agency IRNA that the charges against the three Americans were espionage, while the investigation into the three individuals continues and an announcement about would be made soon.”

The charge of espionage came as international media reported that the three American hikers had strayed into Iran about 9 months ago by accident.

But there are reports that unofficial sources in Iran had even talked of a plan to capture three individuals. Some of these unofficial websites had written that the three Americans had been tricked by their translator guide to enter Iranian territory, where Iranian security agents were waiting and simply arrested them on the spot.

This scenario gained credence when Alaeddin Borujerdi implicitly told Iran’s alAlam Arabic language television channel affiliated to IRIB, that the arrest of the Americans was related to the arrest of a number of Iranians in Iraq by the US, adding, “I do not think the Americans expect this issue to be resolved soon.”

Even though Iranian officials had till now not talked of a swap of the detainees held by each side, but during his visit to New York last year Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had told NBC that, “The release of the three Americans hikers may be tied to the release of Iranian nations held by US forces in Iraq.”

Following that, a number of detained Iranians in Iraq were released and it was expected that the release of the three Americans would soon take place. But on October 7 of 2009 Iran’s foreign minister Manoutchehr Mottaki announced that the Iranian government possessed documents indicating that the US had a hand in the disappearance of an Iranian in Saudi Arabia. This resulted in the delay over the fate of the American detainees in Tehran.

Mottaki specifically had said, “These documents indicate that Americans are responsible for the arrest and detention of Shahram Amiri” (who is dubbed as an Iranian nuclear specialist).

But according to foreign news agencies, Shahram Amiri left Iran on his own and defected to the US. NBC even called this defection a “great victory”. Sunday Telegraph wrote in December 13, 2009 that, “an Iranian scientist who had disappeared in Saudi Arabia six months ago, had revealed aspects of Iran’s nuclear program.”

Even the Iranian media at the time, through ISNA, had written that “It is said that Amiri had intended to defect to a foreign country.”

But swapping Amiri is not necessarily the top priority of the Iranian administration in its requests from Western countries, particularly the US. When unofficial news was published that Iran’s former deputy defense minister Alireza Asghari who had defected to the West was cooperating with Western governments, Iran’s former deputy defense minister who defected to the West earlier, provided to the West, Iranian pro-government websites called for efforts to extradite Asghari.

Asghari had disappeared in 2007 in Turkey and Iranian government news sources claimed that he had been kidnapped by US and Israeli spy agencies and was in their custody. Soon after that, a senior Mossad official revealed that Asghari had probably defected to the West.