The Wall Street Journal-Irans 6 Billion Hostage Business

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the Australian-British academic held prisoner by Iran in 2018-20, has written movingly of the problem: “Every option available to diplomats is a bad one, and every action risks either consigning victims to indefinite suffering or creating new ones.” While Washington can’t “abandon innocent citizens detained overseas,” it must “find creative ways to bring them home.” “Cash bonanzas for hostage-takers” can’t be on the table, Ms. Moore-Gilbert writes. “Punitive measures should be publicly and pre-emptively adopted to send a clear signal that in the future hostage diplomacy will be punished and discouraged, not tolerated and rewarded.”

There is another step Ms. Moore-Gilbert doesn’t mention: keeping Americans out of hostage-taking countries. This has largely been achieved with respect to North Korea. The State Department says “all U.S. passports are invalid for travel to, in, or through the DPRK unless specially validated for such travel under the authority of the Secretary of State.” Such validations are approved “only in very limited circumstances.”

Yet the U.S. hasn’t yet done the same with Iran, which has been unjustly imprisoning Americans for decades. Despite the State Department’s placing the nation on its suggested “Do Not Travel” list, which describes the heightened risk of “kidnapping and arbitrary arrest and detention,” U.S. passports are still valid for such travel. More than 1,000 Americans each year are estimated to visit Iran to see relatives, do business or study in universities.

Consider Xiyue Wang, a doctoral student at Princeton University held hostage in Iran from 2016-19 under baseless charges of espionage. Freed in a cashless prisoner exchange, Mr. Wang sued the university for, among other things, “reckless, willful, wanton, and grossly negligent acts” in encouraging him to study in Iran. Michael White, a U.S. Navy veteran from Imperial Beach, Calif., presents another typical case. After attempting to visit his girlfriend in Iran in 2018, Mr. White was taken prisoner and sentenced to 10 years, in part for allegedly insulting the supreme leader. He was freed in 2020 in exchange for the release of Sirous Asgari, an Iranian scientist detained in the U.S.

These stories aren’t inevitable. Washington can take at least two actions in response to Tehran’s blatant policy of turning hostage-taking into a cash machine.

First, invalidate the use of U.S. passports for travel to the regime. There is no reason to permit Americans to travel to Iran for business or “adventure” tourism. For those whose travel is to visit relatives, a ban would doubtless impose a hardship, but many family reunions could likely be held in neighboring countries such as the United Arab Emirates or Turkey.

That inconvenience would be worth the cost. The majority of Americans taken hostage by the regime in recent decades are also Iranian citizens, but Tehran doesn’t recognize dual citizenship and considers them only Iranian. The State Department notes this risk, stating that “Iranian authorities . . . consistently deny consular access to dual U.S.-Iranian nationals” and “continue to unjustly detain and imprison U.S. nationals, particularly dual national U.S.-Iranian nationals.” While the U.S. can’t stop dual citizens from traveling on foreign passports, perhaps a ban on using American ones would have a deterrent effect.

Second, ensure that no American student goes to Iran. On paper it may seem as if this is already the case. The State Department reports that no U.S. students studied in Iran “for academic credit” in 2019-20, the latest year listed on its study-abroad website. Yet this tally appears not to include students who traveled to Iran to do research as Mr. Wang did.

The U.S. secretaries of state and education should write a letter to the more than 4,000 colleges in America, stating that such expeditions are simply too dangerous, reiterating the language of its travel warning, and asking that no student be encouraged to travel to Iran or receive credit for work done there. The strategy could work given the threat of legal action. After receiving such a letter, colleges could be sued by anyone taken hostage in Iran if the college ignored the government’s advisory and shirked its duty of care to students.

Whatever strategy policy makers choose, one thing is certain. The frequency of the Islamic Republic’s hostage-taking demands that Washington do more than complain, negotiate and meet growing ransom demands, time after time.

Mr. Abrams is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as U.S. special representative for Iran, 2020-21.