State Department says second American 'wrongfully detained' by Iran

WASHINGTON — The State Department has officially determined that a second US citizen is being “wrongfully detained” in Iran, his family said, as the war engulfs the Middle East for a third week. 

Kamran Hekmati, a 61-year-old Jewish resident of New York, traveled to Iran in May to visit his relatives. When he tried to leave through Tehran’s airport, authorities confiscated his passport and arrested him two months later.

The dual Iranian-American citizen was sentenced to two years in prison for having traveled to Israel 13 years before to attend his son’s bar mitzvah. He was charged under an Iranian law that criminalizes Iranian citizens for visiting Israel within the last 10 years.

Hekmati learned in December he was charged for a second time after being accused of meeting with Mossad agents abroad. He maintains that he has never had any contact with the Israeli intelligence agency.

Hekmati has been held in Evin Prison, the notorious detention center in northern Tehran that houses thousands of prisoners, including foreign nationals and political dissidents. Secretary of State Marco Rubio notified Hekmati’s family of the formal designation on Monday, a move that brings increased State Department resources to his case.

“This designation is an official recognition by the US government that Kamran is being held on false charges in an effort by the Iranians to leverage the US government,” Hekmati's cousin Shohreh Nowfar said in a statement. “It reassures us that our government has our back in the effort to get Kamran home safely.”

The State Department did not immediately return a request for comment. Its office for hostage affairs is formally tracking the cases of at least six US nationals held on what appear to be politically motivated charges, Al-Monitor understands. 

The detained include Reza Valizadeh, a 49-year-old Iranian American journalist who was arrested in Tehran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in September 2024 in apparent retaliation for his reporting in the Persian-language outlet Radio Farda. Of the Americans held in Iran, only Valizadeh and Hekmati are officially considered “wrongfully detained” by the State Department. 

On the eve of the Iran war, Rubio designated Iran as a "state sponsor of wrongful detention” for its long history of imprisoning Americans. It marked the first time a country has been assigned the designation, which was created under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in September.

For decades, Iran has detained dual nationals and foreigners to be used as bargaining chips with the United States and European countries, often to secure the release of its citizens held abroad or to regain access to frozen assets.

In his first term, Trump negotiated prisoner swaps with Tehran for the release of Princeton University student Xiyue Wang and Navy veteran Michael White. The Biden administration later authorized the release of $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil revenue for humanitarian use and arranged a similar swap, freeing several Americans held in Iran, including Morad Tahbaz, Siamak Namazi and Emad Shargi. 

The latest State Department travel alert for Iran warns that authorities there continue “to unjustly detain US nationals without warning or any evidence they committed a crime,” jailing them on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security. Having a US passport or connections to the United States “can be reason enough for Iranian authorities to detain someone,” the advisory says. 

The United States has no embassy in Iran and relies on Switzerland to represent its interests there. However, US citizens can no longer receive assistance from the Swiss Embassy’s foreign interests section in Tehran, which shut down last week due to the war. 

This story has been updated since its initial publication.