Another American detained in Iran

Arrest illuminates hard-line tactics to keep country isolated

Before Reza “Robin” Shahini flew to Iran to visit his ailing mother in May, he was careful to delete years-old postings about Iran on his social-media accounts. He was not a political activist, but Shahini wanted to avoid attracting any attention from Iranian authorities.

For the first six weeks, the trip went as planned. The San Diego resident texted friends photos of his sightseeing in the country of his birth.

But on July 11, Shahini, 46, was arrested in Iran on suspicion of crimes against the Islamic Republic, becoming the latest Westerner with dual citizenship to be detained.

He joined two other U.S. citizens known to be detained, and at least four dual nationals from Britain, Canada and France, three of whom who have been arrested in the past five months.

Friends and sources close to the family say that nothing in Shahini’s past suggested he would be targeted. He had made several uneventful trips to Iran before.

But his arrest reflects a shift in tactics by hard-liners in Iran trying to keep the country isolated despite the nuclear deal signed a year ago. Prominent people are not the only ones in the crosshairs. Now, ordinary people are being swept up.

“People with a high profile aren’t traveling to Iran anymore,” said Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council. “So if you want to keep people afraid, you have to go after people who don’t have high profiles.”

In the first two decades after the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranians who fled the country rarely returned. That changed in the late 1990s after the election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who advocated more tolerance and openness. But after protests broke out over a contested election in 2009, a government crackdown discouraged them from returning.

The 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani, who campaigned promising engagement with the West, opened the door again. In New York City for the U.N. General Assembly, he has vowed to make it easier for Iranian American travelers to visit.

“We have a hard time finding seats for them all,” said Cyrus Beheshti, head of Cyrus Travel in California, who attended a Rouhani dinner in New York last fall and met with the Iranian tourism minister.

But Rouhani has come up against fierce opposition from the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which controls the intelligence and security services plus the judiciary. Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, and the Revolutionary Guards have arrested dual nationals as if they were Iranian citizens.

“There’s often a political and economic logic for Iran’s hard-liners to imprison dual nationals,” said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It deters diaspora businessmen from visiting Iran, which is less competition for the Revolutionary Guards. It sabotages improved relations with Washington, which Iran’s hard-liners fear. Lastly, it undermines the agenda of the Rouhani government, who has encouraged dual nationals to return to Iran and bring with them foreign investment.”