Negotiating with terrorists only ends one way.
Emad Shargi, one of the Iranian-Americans traded by Biden for $6 billion and for multiple Iranian agents in the United States, did a 60 Minutes interview in which he said that, “Hostage-taking didn’t start with us and it won’t end with us. It is incumbent upon us in the United States and in Europe to come up with policies that stops innocent people being taken as hostages. And those policies need to be stronger than sanctioning somebody.”
The most obvious thing is what Iranian-Americans resist, for obvious reasons, which is a travel ban to Iran. As well as to any country that makes a habit of taking Americans hostage to trade for their people. Like Russia. And possibly China. Make it illegal for Americans to travel to Iran and suddenly the ayatollahs will have more of a problem finding hostages.
And the alternatives to that are what short of military intervention?
We could do what the Iranians do, which is take a few Iranian regime figures or their families who are visiting the United States, ship them to Gitmo, and then trade them for the hostages.
Beyond that we have no meaningful options.
I sympathize with Shargi, but he was a dual citizen of Iran and America. Dual citizenship with an enemy state shouldn’t even be legal. He spent a whole lot of time in Iran and then when he was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured, we had to trade Iranian regime agents and $6 billion.
There’s never a particularly good answer here. Back during the days of the Roman Empire, all one had to say was Civis Romanus Sum, I am a Roman Citizen, and you had to answer to the Empire. Teddy Roosevelt offered the Jihadis of his day a simple ultimatum when an American was taken hostage, “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.” Under Czarist rule, the United States struggled to defend the rights of Jewish Americans who visited Russia.
Either you’re willing to use force or serious economic leverage to assure the safety of Americans. Since we’re not willing to do either one, we can at least stop incentivizing the taking of hostages.
Negotiating with terrorists only ends one way.
John1 says
Any American citizen who is stupid enough to go to Iran should be on their own. That goes for Afghanistan and North Korea.
Arkady Sheinin says
Right solution. No visitors-no hostages.Include RF in the list.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I agree w/ Daniel that dual citizenship w/ enemy states shouldn’t even be legal. However, there should be a minimum requirement that the US should at least have formal diplomatic relations w/ a country for dual citizenship to be legal. Which it doesn’t have w/ Iran
The other risk of dual citizenship is that if a person is punished by one of his/her countries, the other country that s/he belongs to can’t do much to help. Since both countries have jurisdiction on that person
CogitoErgoSum says
How can we stop Iran from taking hostages? Well, kidnappers usually take hostages in order to exchange the hostages for something the kidnappers want. You know, the solution is so simple that even an idiot could come up with it and I have to hand it to Joe Biden for doing just that. Joe knows that with enough money you can solve any problem. So the solution to this particular problem is this: give kidnappers what they want BEFORE they take any hostages. Joe has always known that money can solve any problem so just tell Joe Biden that you need some money or else you are going to do something bad and just like that you will get all the money you want. Thus, no more people being taken hostage. Anybody who says Joe Biden is an idiot is somebody who just hasn’t given him enough money so he can give that money to somebody else to keep them from causing problems. If you happen to run out of money to give Joe, just tell him you are going to do something bad and he will give you some money. It’s one big beautiful circle – just like the circle of life. I must say, Joe Biden is no ordinary idiot.