After veteran got unexpected help in Iran jail, a repaid favor
WASHINGTON — Michael White had only recently arrived in a grim Iranian jail when a curious fellow prisoner, an English-speaking Iranian, approached him in the courtyard for a conversation.
The American did not reveal much at first, but it was the beginning of an unlikely friendship between White, a Navy veteran imprisoned on spying charges he says were unfounded, and Mahdi Vatankhah, a young Iranian political activist whose positions on social issues had drawn his government's ire.
As the men connected behind bars over a shared interest in politics and human rights, they developed a bond that proved vital for both.
Vatankhah, while in custody and after his release, helped White by providing White's mother with crucial, firsthand accounts about her son's status in prison and by passing along letters White had written while he was locked up. Once freed, White did not forget. He pushed successfully for Vatankhah’s admission to the United States, allowing the men to be reunited last spring inside a Los Angeles airport, something neither could have envisioned when they first met in prison years earlier.
“He risked his life to get the information out for me when I was in the prison in Iran. He really, really did,” White said in an interview alongside Vatankhah. “I told him I would do everything I could in my power to get him here because I felt, one, that would be for his safety in his own life. And also I felt he could be a great contributing member of society here.”
This year, White received permission for Vatankhah to live temporarily in the United States under a government program known as humanitarian parole, which allows people in for urgent humanitarian reasons or if there is a significant public benefit.
White, 50, a Southern California native who spent 13 years in the Navy, was arrested in Iran in 2018 after traveling to the country to pursue a romantic relationship with a woman he met online. He was jailed on various charges, including espionage accusations that he calls bogus, as well as allegations of insulting Iran's supreme leader.
He endured what he says was torture and sexual abuse, an ordeal he documented in a handwritten diary that he secretly maintained behind bars, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what the US government has said was a wrongful detention.
Vatankhah, now 24, said he had been in and out of prison since he was a teenager because of his involvement in left-leaning causes and vocal criticism of the Iranian government, including through protests, social media posts, and university newspaper pieces.
Though Vatankhah was later released, he was arrested again, this time winding up in the same cell as White in Iran's Mashhad prison.
During the course of their friendship, Vatankhah helped White navigate his imprisonment and better understand the judicial system, functioning as an interpreter to help him communicate with guards and other inmates. In early 2020, while Vatankhah was out on furlough, he also became a vital conduit to the outside world for White.
Using contact information White had given him, Vatankhah got in touch with Jonathan Franks, a consultant in the United States for families of American hostages and detainees who was working on White’s case and later helped spearhead the humanitarian parole process for Vatankhah.
White was released in a June 2020 prisoner swap, exchanged for an American-Iranian physician imprisoned in the United States for violating American sanctions laws. Vatankhah, released the same year, made his way to Turkey.
White argued in his March application on Vatankhah's behalf that his friend met the criteria for humanitarian parole.
Vatankhah is now living in San Diego, where White is from.