Pod Save the World - 544 days in an Iranian prison

Episode Date: February 6, 2019

Tommy and Ben talk with the Washington Post's Jason Rezaian about his book Prisoner, which details the 544 days he spent in an Iran's notoriously brutal Evin Prison. Jason was held hostage by the Iranian regime and held as leverage in the nuclear negotiations. Jason details his experience while Ben explains what the negotiations were like from his perch in the White House. It is a hell of a good episode.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. Terrible head cold edition. I'm sorry you have to endure the sound of my voice starting this intro. But I have a very special episode today that I'm incredibly excited to finally release for you guys. My guest was Jason Rezion. He is a writer for the Washington Post Global Opinion section. He used to be their Tehran Bureau Chief. Jason, unfortunately, was used as a pawn by the Iranian regime as they conducted a negotiations with the Obama regime over the Iran nuclear deal. Ultimately, he ended up spending 544 days in an Iranian prison. And so the book, Prisoner, is the story of his captivity and what he had to endure. It's also a beautiful love story about his wife and the story of his family coming to America. It's just really a great book. But we got together for about an hour here at Crooked Media HQ. And Jason talked about what it was like for him being in an Iranian prison, being held by the IRGC. But what I think made this conversation unique was that Ben Rhodes also joined. And Ben was on the other side of these negotiations with the Iranians. And so Ben knew the ins and outs of

the U.S. government's efforts to free Jason. You may have heard about the pallets of cash being sent over to Iran. That was part of Jason's case. So we talked through all the context, like what that experience was like, how he felt when he got out, a whole bunch of policy questions in terms of how Jason thinks we should be dealing with Iran, and ultimately like what it feels like to be upon in these negotiations, and then also to be criticized and to become part of a right-wing boogeyman when the Republicans wanted to attack Obama over the pallets of cash and all the assorted bullshit that they do. So it is one of the best interviews I think we've ever done. I really hope you will listen, that you'll share it with your friends and that you'll buy

Jason's book, Prisoner, because there is a lot of great stuff that we just didn't have time to talk about. And with that, here's the interview with Jason Reson. I'm Jason. Welcome to Crooked Media. Thanks for doing Pod Save the World. It is great to see you. Great to be seen. Great to see you guys. Thanks for having me on. I just want to say first, I am 243 pages into a 29-something page book. So you're still in prison in my reading. You couldn't do the all-nighter time? Yeah, I haven't gotten to the good part of the book. But I just want to say that it's a beautiful family story and love story that's set into prison. And I also learned so much about Iran, the Iranian regime, your story, what these bastards put you through.

So I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone who just wants to read a really good story. Well, thanks for saying. So, you know, if I could undo those 544 days, I probably would. But now that they happened and they're part of my life, I figured it was worth telling the story and doing it in a way that was my own style. Yeah. Yeah. And I hope that's what it is. Well, I think it was.

So it struck me reading the book how stupid and self-defeating it was for these goons in Iran, the IRGC members, to capture you. Because in some ways, you seem like the closest thing they had to an ally in the Western press. Like you loved Iranian food, the culture, the people. You married an Iranian woman, right? You encouraged Anthony Bourdain to come to Tehran to visit. In some ways, you were helping them, whether or not they knew it. Why do you think that they would take someone like you and imprison you? Well, I think that we have to draw the distinction that within the Iranian regime and power structure,

and people want to talk about moderates and hardliners. Let's forget about those two labels. Let's talk about two different groups. One who wants to kind of shut Iran off from the world, have it be a self-contained Islamic, Shia-Islamic utopia, and not engage with other countries economically, culturally, or diplomatically. and then another group that realizes that that's not possible. It's 2019, now 2014 at the time, that the world is going in a different direction. Those were the people that Ben and the rest of you folks in the administration were talking to.

And they understood the way things were going and needed to go, but the IRGC didn't. And I think that it was exactly those things that you just described that made me most problematic for them. Yeah. But ultimately, I don't think it had anything to do with what I was doing that they took me. It was more the fact that, okay, here is an Iranian and American dual national working for, you know, arguably, if not the most high profile news organization based in Tehran, the second most high profile one. And the one that's the paper of record of the U.S. Capitol, that this was going to be an astounding and audacious thing to do that might get in the way. way of the negotiations that you all had underway. And I don't think that they thought that just the taking of me would do that, would accomplish

the kind of scuttling of the deal before it happened, but it was part of a larger program to fuck things up. Yeah. And let me echo Tommy. This is the best kind of book, right, because it's a personal story. You would want to read this just to know about you and Yegi, your wife, and what you went through and how you dealt with that. you know, someone trying to envision how they would go through such an extreme scenario,

I think you're a guide through that. But also, if you want to know about the context in Iran and some of the backdrop to it, it's great for that. So everybody should check it out. To kind of build on Tommy's question, you know, I've always wondered about what the level of belief is among people in this system in the sense that, like, you know, I'd negotiate with Cubans, right? And they believed, or I couldn't tell whether they believed the consent.

conspiracy theories that I might sometimes hear from them, right? Right. And, you know, you detail really horrific tactics, solitary confinement for extraordinary periods of time. They threatened you, these interrogations. I mean, you really get it kind of the inhumanity of people who would hold you in this type of circumstance. And you managed to kind of laugh at the stupidity of what they're throwing at you, you know, avocados and Kickstarter campaigns. And you're a spy, you know. And in addition to, I guess, just getting at how you were able to find some kind of dark humor in the absurdity of what the charges were that they were loving at you, I was just wondering, like, whether you thought about, you know, did they believe this? Or do they not care that their orders are to make you a spy, and so they find a way for you to do it.

And I remember I went through as Hala Svandieri as a friend of mine, and she had the same situation that, you know, she was a spy because she worked at a third. think tank and and they seem to believe that. But what did you evaluate about like both the absurdity of, you might tell the listener to the absurdity of the picture they're trying to paint of you as some kind of spy and whether or not you actually think that they thought that was true? So I think that, you know, you kind of alluded to it. I mean, they've made the decision of what you are. Yeah. And then they have to build the case with whatever they got. Yeah. And they didn't have much. Yeah. So it was as ridiculous as it looked. Yeah. And they would continually say, you know, we have all this other evidence, but it's so sensitive that we can't

make it public, right? And I know, you know, from conversations with John Kerry that, you know, Zerif was even pulling that bullshit with Kerry. Yeah. Pretty late in the game that like, well, you know, I haven't seen it myself, but I hear there's some really, you know, terrible things that Jason has done and they have evidence of it. Yeah. But it's so classified that me as the foreign minister, I can't even see it. Yeah. So I think that there is this sort of rabid desire to protect the existence of the regime more than anything else.

Yeah. That you're getting further and further away from the revolutionary moment of now 40 years ago. The ideology of the place has sort of been diluted. You know, even the people that were interrogated me that had me in their possession, watched American movies and, you know, consumed Western. brands, their reason for being is to just protect this system, keep it intact, and root out anything that could get in the way.

So I don't think it matters if they believed it or not. I do think, though, that, you know, these young men who were my interrogators had to believe on some level that I was guilty of something. Something, yeah. They were told that I was guilty, and it's their job to prove that. Yeah. And they didn't do a good job. Ben mentioned Kickstarter and avocados.

Like those two things were evidence. Can you explain that? Yeah. So, in 2010, a friend of mine who actually, I was up in San Francisco giving a talk yesterday, he's now a TED Talk fellow and a National Geographic Explorer. At the time, neither one of us had much going on. And he had just started using Kickstarter to fund little projects.

He was like, you know, let's do something on Iran, something a little esoteric that can get you a little bit of publicity. and some, you know, get people thinking about things. So, you know, I decided to try and fund an avocado farm in Iran because there's no avocados in Iran. Why aren't there are avocados in Iran? Is it because of sanctions that the U.S. has placed on Iran? Is it because there's some Islamic prohibition to avocados?

There's no mention of avocados in the Koran. You know, why aren't they here? Who knows? You know, I didn't know, and I wanted to find out. And I was going to, you know, attempt to find out by trying to bring a few trees over. four years later in that first interrogation, they say to me that it's obvious that this is code for something. Why was it obvious? Because Alan Eyre, an American diplomat who's sort of the diplomat with the highest level of Farsi language in the U.S. government.

He was a Farsi spokesperson for a while. Yeah. He liked it on Facebook and left a comment about, you know, this is hilarious or whatever. What this avocado project is, we don't know. it's sinister. And they kept this line of questioning up for months. It wasn't the only thing they questioned me about, but it was always there. And as time went on when they would go down other ridiculous routes, they would always come back to, you know, we gave you a break on that avocado thing. You're going to have to come clean on something else. Project avocado. Yeah.

Oh my God. So you were held for 544 days in even prison, which is notoriously awful prison in Iran. on the other side of the planet, the United States government, was involved in a near constant effort to negotiate and get you back. This is a really exciting day, I think, for me and for listeners, because, you know, some people might have heard your story on, you know, NPR or whatever, but rarely do they get to hear both sides of this negotiation. So I was hoping to, like, Ben, you could talk about the things that you guys were talking about in the situation room when you were talking about how to get Jason out.

And then Jason, like, how it felt for you after the fact to learn about all this churn that was happening in Washington while they were sitting there in your cell saying everyone forgot about you, no one cares about you, you're going to die. Yeah, well, I, yeah, I mean, I guess I'd just, Jason, I'd tee it up by, you know, maybe describing kind of what was going on our end and we can, you know, chat about it. I mean, you know, and the first point here is that this took place during your detention and interrogation, we're in the nuclear negotiations, right? So, kind of two phases of this. The first phase, is during the nuclear negotiation when Jason is still in prison.

And we would always raise these cases and try different ways to, you know, compel the Iranians to release Jason. We had previous experience with the three hikers who've been detained and tried to find other people who could intervene in the Iranian system to try to at least get somebody out like Jason. But the challenge we faced, right, is that if we brought you fully into the nuclear negotiation and said, we're not doing this nuclear deal unless Jason resigned and some of the other people who are in prison are kind of a part of it, that then your pawns in a much bigger game, right?

And if we don't get a nuclear deal, we can't get you out or they're leveraging you to keep, you know, parts of their nuclear infrastructure. So it was a very complicated time. And I'd be curious, I guess before I even get to the actual negotiation that then led to your release, you know, how do you? does that make you feel to hear that? I mean, were you resentful that you felt that you might be, you know, either separate from the nuclear issue and your case had to kind of wait for that? Or do you think there would have been a way to introduce you to that? Because you obviously

must have had some awareness. You know, you're not getting a lot of news in there, but that this is happening. How do you see that dilemma for a policymaker? So, you know, I will tell you that one thing that four months into my imprisonment, so November of 2014, my interrogator started telling me that there are negotiations going on for you. Yeah. Which was true. Yeah, it was true. I didn't believe him.

Yeah. You know, I had no reason to believe him. This is one of the few things that he said to me that was actually, you know, honest. And I think that I realized really early on that me getting out would have something to do with this deal, but it wasn't going to be. be an impediment to getting the deal done. I'm one person. Yeah.

I'm not an idiot. You know, I know how the world works. Yeah. But the hard thing for me, especially after July 2015, when the deal was signed, was the deal is signed. It's not going to be implemented right now. It will happen between, I think it was going to be between October and January. Why don't I get out right now?

Yeah. Right? Like why? And if I'm not getting out right now, Does that mean? Then you start to worry. Is there no action on this? And so then as we start to get closer to January of 2016,

suddenly in my mind it's like, okay, if I'm not getting out now, I'm not getting out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't want to spoil the end of the book, but read it. And that's pretty much true. Yeah. And a credit to you guys and to Secretary Kerry and President Obama and especially Brett McGurck for making sure that didn't happen and making sure my wife got out as well. You know, I had, I would say probably because of my job and understanding the fraught relations between the U.S. and Iran for all these years, that we were on the cusp of some really cataclysmic changes and possibilities.

And I assumed that it would be really difficult to sell this deal as my name got. kind of more prominent in the conversation, sell the deal to a public who was, correct me if I'm wrong, not 100% into it, you know? So I felt like I had all of those things working in my favor. Yeah. Yeah, well, so then what, you know, so we had been negotiating on the sidelines the nuclear deal, people like Wendy Sherman, and then after the deals reached in July, essentially a separate, entirely separate discussion channel gets set up dedicated to this question. of your case and a variety of other prisoners. And Brett McGurke takes the lead in those discussions.

And what's interesting about them is that they're with a different set of people. Right. So the nuclear negotiations, as you say, are with kind of the front-facing, Rahani, Zarif, a more – I don't know if we want to use the moderate label, but people who have – I want to engage. The people that have to engage. Yeah. And then the IRC are clearly the people who are holding you, so we have to get to those people.

So we start talking to people who are in more of the security realm. and Brett is. And it inevitably morphs towards some type of exchange, right? And they wanted a really long list of Iranians out of prison. And there were certain people that we just weren't going to be able to release, which are people who had some direct connection to, I guess, say, terrorist activity, for instance. But they have a lot of people who were really in for fairly low-hanging kind of sanctions violations. Frankly, some of these people who ended up getting released, like, you know, they're still in the United States. Yeah, they didn't go back. I think we go back.

Not a single one of them that I know of went back. Yeah, they walk out of prison in Texas and they're just hanging out there. And the problem is that as we, and then as we're obviously reducing the, we're not giving them people they want. You know, we also introduce this kind of pending Iranian claim that they have, where we owe them money. And, you know, they had purchased a significant amount of military equipment from the United States before the Shah left. and we never delivered it and they paid us. And so they had essentially the claim at the International Court for this at the Hague. By the way, I don't want to interrupt you,

but a court that has made judgments against Iran in favor of the United States that Iran has paid several billion dollars over the years. Yeah, a lot more than this. Not without precedent. Not without precedent. These claims have been able to be resolved even given our relations. So the idea is that we're going to kind of concurrently to all this stuff that's The nuclear deal is being finalized.

There's going to be some prisoner exchange. We're going to resolve this claim. And Brett was, it takes, I've learned in the US government a person who's just so dogged that we're going to do this, that they will force the meetings that need to happen and force the conversations and get the attention of senior people. And I remember Brett coming to me because I'd done a prisoner exchange in Cuba and us kind of comparing notes about how do you, what lines can you not cross? So for instance, I said, look, look, you can't get into releasing people who are talking about. terrorist, right? But, you know, you can release more Iranians if they're not people who've done those, you know, types of things. And if it's something that needs to be resolved anyway, like a claim, like now is a good time to go big. And we did the same thing in Cuba. We resolved a whole set of

issues between the U.S. and Cuba around a normalization of relations and a prisoner exchange. And so ultimately, it took that creativity led by Brett as well as just kind of talking and talking and talking to this other channel to get you out. And also importantly, insisting that your wife be permitted to leave with you. On that score, I guess, I mean, would you have left Iran if Yegi wasn't on that plane? Look, I mean, I imagine that ultimately, if they wanted to put me on a plane, they could put me on a plane. But I was pretty obstinate about it, especially your hands are tied, right, for a year

and a half, and you've got no choice over anything. but I'm constantly saying, well, what the fuck? You know, we're married. She hadn't done anything. She's never going to get out of here. And in the back of our minds, it's just like, if she doesn't get out on this plane with me. Yeah.

It's about 10 days that they're priming me for departure. And it was, you know, at the airport. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, yeah. You know, and it just kind of all comes full circle when, you know, the Swiss ambassador comes. And it's like this, you know, new wall of lies has been. torn down in front of me. Tell that story.

Yeah, so I'll start on my end because it's, I think we talked about this once, but I'm in the White House and we're waiting for like the word, right? And so like Brett is on the ground in Europe, right? And there's a plane on the ground in Iran and we're sitting in the White House. And we suddenly hear that there's a problem,

there's a hitch, that they can't find everybody who can't get on this plane. And they couldn't find, you know, Yaggy. And my mom. And they couldn't find Jason's mom, right? And so we're sitting here thinking, this whole thing, which is already kind of beginning to leak out, might collapse because the Iranians might not, maybe they're not operating in good faith. We didn't know the reason why these people weren't showing up at the plane.

And is it that just people can't find them or the Iranians lined us? So there's a period of time from my end, and I love to hear, you know, again for our listeners, how you would describe this. Like, I'm sitting in the White House, like, literally waiting for a call, you know, that this plane is taken off. I mean, think of Argo, right? I'm like the dude and the, you know, sitting back in Langley, like waiting for the call, you know, waiting for the phone to ring. And we didn't know why it was that not everybody was on this plane. So that was our experience. I'm going to tell this story. I'm looking at Tommy.

You haven't gotten to page 270 or so. I'm learning this in real time. It's a really cool story. So I'm going to tell this story on one condition. We got to get Obama to tweet about the book. Yes, yes. Agreed. We agree on behalf of Eric Schultz.

Yeah, we use all leverage, all necessary measures. So I learned this in Iranian prison. Right, exactly. You want to get something done? You need some leverage. So I'm taken to the airport on January 16th. It's a Saturday. Is that like a day of 540?

43. You know, and a lot of times people talk to me about your 543 days. I'm like, fuck you. It's on the cover of the book for a reason. That last day was the hardest one, you know? It really was. So we get to the airport. You know, they've taken me out.

it's the first time I'm leaving a prison not blindfolded in my own clothes. And my mom and Yegy are told to come meet me at the airport to say goodbye. And we get to the airport. And there's a, you know, a team of state media reporters. Right. You know, they need their propaganda moment. And they're filming all this. And it's just really disgusting.

Yeah, you know, like, you know, as if they haven't treated me enough like a circus animal for the last year and a half. Now they want to get their last kind of bits of film. And so, you know, we say our goodbyes. My mom and Yegi leave. About 10 minutes later, this big massive dude, I don't know if you ever met Ambassador Haas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You must have, right? This big bald guy, you know, like shaved head, Mr. Clean, you know, walks in and really nice suit.

And he introduces himself as the Swiss ambassador, Giulio Haas. Gives me a hug. And he says, look, you know, there's supposed to be three of you here. here, but you're here alone. Where's everybody else? And I'm thinking he's talking about Hek-Madi and Saeed Abadini. Who are other prisoners? Two other prisoners, yeah. And I said, well, you mean those guys?

No, no, your mother and your wife. They're supposed to be here. And I said, no, you know, I've been told for so long that whenever I leave, my wife's going to come separately. And he says, Jason, I've been in the middle of these negotiations for 14 months. Your wife has been part of this from the beginning. And, you know, my interrogator, who you've gotten to know in the book, is, you know, on the other side of the room, kind of hovering over, trying to listen. And I said, well, what's going to happen now? He said, well, the plane's not leaving without your wife and your mother. It might take a few more minutes.

Yeah, so long. But, you know, it's too far along for this deal to fall apart. This is like 9 p.m. He leaves, you know, I have a fight with my interrogator like, you lying piece of shit. You know, I can't believe all the way right up until the end. And he's, you know, saying that guy's introducing this for the first time. There's never been any discussion about your wife. She has nothing to do with it.

You need to get on this plane and leave. I mean, he didn't understand that the plane wouldn't leave without my wife. I mean, they made it very clear that that wasn't going to happen. But it goes on for another 16 hours. Jesus. And it turns out that they had locked my wife and my mom in another room in the airport, taken their cell phones from them. finally at seven o'clock in the morning I'm still you know I've been taken to another part of the airport

waiting with Saeed Abadini and Amir Hekmati yeah and you know they let my mom and my wife go they turn on the telephone they've got like hundreds of missed calls yeah from Brett yeah from my brother yeah you know finally to get my brother on the phone and my brother's like you know screaming at them you know I'd like to talk you to talk about my brother a little bit oh my god but you know from your point of view but I think it's pretty rare that a civilian has been so involved in something like this. Effective, yeah. But, you know, he said, look, you got to get home, pack a bag, you're leaving on this plane, and my wife is saying, well, Jason's already left. You know,

the plane's already gone. And of course, you know, I was still sitting waiting. And then finally, by 11 a.m., we're all reunited, and we get on the plane and we leave, and there's still complications. I mean, we're on the tarmac for three or four hours before we took off. And it was like the most hair-raising thing you could imagine. You remember the end of Indiana Jones and the last crusade? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, only the penitent mammal pass. And you know, you've got to take a step across the thing

and there's that bridge there, but you can't really see it. I felt like that. You know, I've gone through hell and back for the last year and a half. I always kind of knew that getting out wasn't going to be just like, here you go. You're on your way, and it wasn't. Can I just ask you, I mean, being arrested for doing nothing wrong and thrown in prison and thrown in solitary confinement and interrogated and harassed is torture in and of itself. To do that wondering the whole time how your wife is being treated if she's going to get out, if she's okay, is just a whole other level of torture.

I guess my question is like, how did you deal with that? Because I think my brain would spin in loops that would drive me insane. I learned very early, you know, maybe a week or so into it, that I just had to not think about things that I had no control over. As much as I wanted to think about my wife, I thought about making plans with my wife, thought about what it is that we would do when eventually this thing ended,

whatever this thing was and if it ended. But those first few weeks in solitary, you're too confused. to really be pondering the worst, right? Yeah. You just assume that everything's going to work out, that somebody's going to have some sense talked into them, and you're going to go home and get back to your life.

But as time dragged on, and I had no news of her, and, you know, they were threatening me with death and dismemberment, threatening my in-laws, threatening her. I mean, inevitably, you go to that place. And I hate to say this out loud, but, you know, Evian prison is known for prison rape. I mean, there's been a lot of that over the years. So when I finally saw her, it was on day 35, that they allowed us a very brief meeting,

it was probably the happiest moment in my life, right? Just the ultimate relief that, okay, she's alive. She's, you know, physically okay. I remember she looked at me. I'd lost, you know, 30, 40 pounds at that point. She made me kind of pull up my shirt just to show her that I hadn't been beaten, you know. And that kind of, it was those kind of short encounters that were the only breath of air that I had. Yeah.

Right? That would get me through another period of time until I could see her again. And then when she was finally released after 72 days, she spent all 72 of them in solitary. Jesus. A couple of days later, they took me to the room where we would have our kind of periodic meetings together. And I didn't know that she'd been released. And she walked in in her own clothes. And I was just like, okay.

You know, on the one hand, I was kind of heartbroken that we weren't let out together. But at the same time, it was such a relief not to worry about what could be happening to her. Yeah. Thank God. Your brother, you mentioned, I mean, he, what was so unique about him is, you know, tragically there are a lot of people, a small number, but too high of a number of people who have loved ones who are either taken hostage or imprisoned in other countries or caught up in political intrigue. And, you know, there are very few people who have the combination of attributes that your brother did

that he could play what I would call both the outside game and the inside game. Right? So some people are really good at building public pressure and public attention, there's some people really good at kind of coming in and meeting with us and being informed about it. He really did both. Like he helped engineer with the post a very, you know, effective, relentless public campaign to keep a spotlight on your detention, to get prominent voices out on it, and to make sure that there was pressure on us as well as the Iranians to be resolving this. But at the same time, he also was a partner, essentially, to us in thinking through different strategies to get you out.

as Brett is working on this. And I'm wondering, like, did you, were you aware of any of these efforts on your behalf? I knew about the public efforts. Yeah. And, you know, whenever Yeggy would talk to Ali, you know, his response was, we're doing everything we can. There's nothing that I can tell you. Yeah, he obviously, he's talking on the phone, right? Yeah, exactly.

You know, there's nothing I can tell you. All I can tell you is whatever happens, it'll happen to both of you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because I think that that's something. that you all agreed on pretty early on. And for her, that was obviously a big concern throughout.

So he would, you know, you just say, look, he's so disciplined. You know, you would just say, I don't know if anything is happening behind the scenes. All I know is from my conversations with people that, you know, they've given me their insurance, that whenever something good happens, it'll happen for both of you. And, you know, it was in those last few days when they came and told me that I was being released, the next day I had a meeting with my mom and my wife and I was like, well, get on the phone to my fucking brother

and just figure out if this is, and so they called him up and he's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. You know? So, and I'm so thankful for that because I have had a front row seat to other people who are dealing with this similar thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And as you say, I mean, some people are really good at the public pressure and, you know, don't know how to separate those two. Yeah. I credit his ability to do that with our, you know, our Persian rug-s-owned dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair. You know, it's probably the only... Literally, Persian rug-Ox-O-Dat.

Exactly, exactly. It's literally the only thing Iranian about my brother, probably. I think, like, given all that you've been through, it would be understandable if you hated Iran, you wanted to see Iran punished to the greatest extent possible. You want to see military action against Iran. You don't. You're surprised. the Iran deal, you support engaging Iran? Why, how did you come to that position? So, you know,

I write in the book and it's really true. Ben and I have had the opportunity to talk about this fair bit. The things that you guys were doing was what I would have been doing if I was in your position as well. And I think a lot of times people have mistaken my reporting for, you know, being rah-rah about it. I just happened to be seeing the same things. right the the progression of the society and the distancing of people from the ideology and how opening up with Iran and engaging the people even more would be the ultimate way to support the people and support them in a way that

would bring them closer to our interests as Americans and I think that a lot of people have kind of in America we have this problem of not being able to to kind of separate a regime from its people. Yeah. Other countries don't have that problem. And, you know, people ask me all the time, like, why can't you guys figure this out? I mean, it's partly media's fault.

Yeah. Right? We're not that good at it at separating the two. So for me, it was always important to show Iranian people in a positive light. And if I'd be a real asshole if I were to kind of change gears on that right now. People ask me, you know, why I've decided to sue Iran. Yeah. Right.

And, you know, I'm seeking a massive amount in damages. ultimately they should pay for what they did to me and my family and what they've done to innocent people who are nationals of other countries. They've been doing this for 40 years, and nothing has made them stop doing it. And, you know, we talk a little bit about the money. The money talking point was the IRGC talking point, way before it was the neocon talking point. So the money being the $400 million in cash that was flown Iran that day, which was, part of a $1.7 billion settlement. Yeah. I'm still waiting for my cut.

Yeah. Yeah. How did it feel watching that transfer of funds that we owed them that I think that if the court had ruled on that case, the United States might have owed Iran more. More. We actually got a good deal. Yeah, we got a good deal. We really did. It's a lot less than what they could have.

I mean, again, we owed them money from equipment that we never delivered. And there's interests associated with the lack of payment of those funds, right? Over decades. So essentially what we got is a deal without the interest. I heard that you guys would probably have to pay four point something, right? And you ended up paying 1.7. I think that's a pretty good deal. Look, I think that, you know, I've spoken to so many people in government about this.

Anybody that follows Iran, Iranian Americans in particular, knew about that $400 million for the last 40 years. It's not a new claim that the Iranians have made. And I think that you and I talked about it. You know, when it became a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, I think that was early August of 2016. I asked you about it in June of 2016. It was a known thing. This wasn't any kind of secret.

We didn't try to hide it. Actually, I was joking, you know, that before we went on here, is that I was in the meetings and I had a communication responsibility, so people were like, Ben, you know, people look at me very seriously in these meetings before you got out, you know, do you think that, you're confident that we can defend this? And I'm like, of course, you know, we're getting a good deal and it's less money than we'd have to pay with interest. And that's a big, you know, saving billions of dollars. The fact that we had to do this in cash is in part because our sanctions make it so complicated to transfer money to the Iranians, right?

So it's not like they didn't get anything. You'd almost think it was more valuable because it was, I mean, it's just how do you pay somebody that you can't wire money to because they're sanctions, right? And that's what that was about. But I was saying, you know, I'm confident that we can tell. the story. Look, I knew we'd take heat. I wanted to give that assurance in part because I wanted you to get out. But, you know, there's so much cynicism and some of the attacks on us. This was particularly cynical because this was all known. It was brief to Congress and basically what ends up happening is a pretty extended period of time after the deal, like eight months after this

is done. The Wall Street Journal, Jay Solomon, who subsequently found to be very close to the Amirati government. Yeah, trying to make business deals. Yeah. You know, sensationalizes as if it's a discovery that some of this was in cash and somehow, first of all, why does it matter? The value is the same, right? So there was an absurdity to it.

You can't fucking Venmo the IRC. Yeah. Turns out. Yeah, I mean, maybe you can, but, you know, it's cash up. Yeah, we use the cash up here. But here's the thing, you know, and people talk about, you know, and this became a talking point in all of the debates as well. All three of the debates, the, you know, the trade and the money.

came up in 2016. $1.7 billion, I mean, I think the three of us can agree that, you know, we could split that money and live happily ever after. Yes. But, you know, $1.7 billion, even for Iran whose military budget is, you know, smaller than the Netherlands, that's not a huge amount of money, especially when there's all these other stuff that they were doing in the country development-wise. I mean, you know, they're building all sorts of retail spaces and, you know, trying to

repair roads and everything. I mean, that money was spoken for well before they ever got it. And I just think the whole argument is complete disingenuous for another reason,

which is that, you know, these same people that were attacking you guys for doing this deal were also people who were saying, don't do the deal

until... And now that we're out of the deal, in the lead up to pulling out of the deal last May, not one of those guys was saying, whoa, whoa, whoa,

don't pull out until we get these Americans back. Yeah, and there's some Americans in prison. And there's a bunch of Americans, six of them now. Yeah. And, you know, unfortunately, I don't see any of those people coming home as long as we're out of that deal. I wanted to come back to something Tommy was saying, which is, you know, the engagement question.

You and I had a really interesting discussion about this in the White House the first time I saw you after you got out. Because you told me you'd kind of seen the Cuba thing that we'd done. You know, you'd been in prison, but you were aware of it. And I remember you said something fascinating to me, which is, because I'd heard the point already about appealing to Iranian people, right? We had some Iranian-Americans on our team. I had an Iranian-American work for me for three years, Sferra-il-Go-Vosheri.

And in addition to doing the analysis and the experts, you know, talking to people, they make the case that if you did certain things, like you made it easier for students to study the United States, you built that goodwill with the Iranian people. That creates its own kind of bottom-up pressure on the regime, where that empowers the kind of type of middle class that you want to be demanding. depending different outcomes. The other thing you said to me that I thought was fascinating was the one thing that the real hardliners there, the RDC types that people wanted to be sealed, don't know how to deal with is engagement. They know how to deal with conflict. They know how to deal with

confrontation. They know how to deal with bad rhetoric and tough talk from the United States. And it's so funny because the opposite, there's a mentality in the United States that, no, the more we yell at them and the more forceful we are in our rhetoric, the more they'll back down. And the point you made is that's actually the opposite. They love having yelling fights back and forth and issue statements back and forth. They don't know how to deal. You throw them off balance if you engage them. And if you engage them in open ways.

Yeah, yeah. So the people can see. Can see it. Can see that you're willing to. And I wanted to get your view of, so we've obviously seen this administration go back to the let's yell at them and let's not be seen to be engaging them. there's this kind of really bad effort to make it look like they care about the Iranian people, but I don't think people in Iran really buy that. And I'm wondering, you know, I'd always saw it as if we were building a ramp of our policy that had continued,

my hope was that as that engagement was evident and that willingness to engage was evident, not that the regime would necessarily suddenly just change, but that you might begin to impact debates inside of Iran. And sure, there's a presidential election coming up in Iran. There's also going to be Supreme Leader succession, right? That guy's holding on, you know, by thread. And I'm wondering how you think this hard line approach is going to affect those debates inside of Iran, the Supreme Leader Succession, the presidential election. So when whatever administration is in office in Washington mirrors what the IRGC is doing in Iran, it tightens that space of free society, of civil society, right, within Iran. And, you know, look, we see more protests in Iran right now than we have at any point in the last 40 years.

But that's because of economic issues more than anything else. These people aren't out there protesting, you know, for free speech. Yeah. By and large, they're protesting for bread, right? And their paychecks. I think that the way that we talk about Iran right now and supporting the aspirations, the free aspirations of the people is so fucking disingenuous. Yeah.

For a bunch of reasons. But, you know, the greatest example is this travel ban, right? Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, is supposedly a domestic U.S. policy, but has real life ramifications for tens of thousands of Iranians who want to come here and hundreds of thousands of Americans who have connections to Iran. So I think that, you know, that we're only strengthening those people that want to keep the doors closed by having this hardline policy. The best thing you can do is let people come and stuff. here. Best thing you can do is let people do business here. And oh, by the way, the people who are coming and doing business still and who are the ones that, I can't remember the type of visa,

but you pay a half a million dollars that you can buy a green card or whatever, those are the people that are working with the IRGC. Right? So we're not doing anything to help normal folks. And I think that's a shame for a couple of reasons, but one of the biggest problems with it that I see is that, you know, you guys between 2012 and 2016 gained so much knowledge. Yeah, yeah. And whether or not this administration wants to use that knowledge for nefarious purposes, all they basically did was, you know, throw that in a garbage can, lit it on fire and like,

okay, we're starting fresh. And I don't think the American people are that stupid. Yeah. I don't think we're stupid to think that, you know, we know nothing about that country. You guys spend a lot of time, a lot of capital, a lot of political will. So, and I also think it's important to say, that on the nuclear deal front, you guys didn't see this as a, you know, a solution to everything. I've been making this case, yeah, the only people who ever suggested that we thought that were our critics.

Yeah. My question, though, is how much of that Iran policy and hope was in some way designed to curtail Saudi influence? Well, that's a good, because I wanted to ask you about that. because you wrote, I mean, Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who was brutally murdered by the Saudis in Turkey, he was your colleague at the Washington Post, he was your friend. You wrote a great piece about the total lack of response to that horrific crime in the total double standard of U.S. policy towards Iran and Saudi Arabia. And I took a lot of shift for that piece. And I continue to because people come to me and say, well, you know, you're an apologist for the same regime that took your prisoner.

First and foremost, I've got no law. love for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yeah. But I'm alive, and Jamal Khashoggi is not. He was murdered in the most despicable, inhumane way that you can imagine. And you expect that sort of thing in a country like Iran in the, you know, dark corners of a prison. You don't expect that in a consulate, you know, within the, you know, biggest city of one of

our NATO allies. Yeah. Right. So I think that there is this massive double standard. There always has been. everybody knows about it. But, you know, I always thought, just assume, not that we're going to, like, go and, you know,

jump into the warm embrace of Tehran and forget about Riyadh and Tel Aviv. But, like, let's even the playing field just a little bit. Yeah. So it was interesting because we took a lot of shit for this, obviously. Because it was our policy to essentially say to the Saudis, like, you're going to have to figure out how to share this neighborhood, right? And the more you... Because some of these conflicts, you know, Iran is precipitating.

But some of them the Saudis, you know, are escalating as well. And it's a back and forth. And that if you guys don't try to figure out some way to cool the temperature down here, you don't have to get along. But like you also don't need to be at war in multiple countries. Right now, Iran and Saudi Arabia through their proxies are fighting in most countries in the region in some manner. So it wasn't a question of shifting sides to Iran at all, which is what the Saudis and their kind of proxies in Washington.

Washington would say, it was about trying to find some degree of balance here. And we tried very hard, and I haven't talked about this that much publicly, but in 2015 and 16, to say to them, open up a channel. And by the way, we were saying to the Iranians, too. You know, you guys need to talk to each other. Yeah. And I remember when we went to Riyadh for one of our last trips to Riyadh, it may have been our last trip to Riyadh in early 2016, we made this case to them. We laid it out. We said, look, there are people that we think would talk to you on the Iranian side. and all we got was, you know, know, like, we're going to confront them in Yemen, right? Was that from, like, MBS?

It was from MBS directly, right? And so he's just kind of popping off about Yemen. And, you know, the king is saying, and I always wondered, you know, King Abdullah hated the Iranians too, but he was a little bit more of a pragmatic guy. And it's an interesting question because essentially what happens is we tried to facilitate some capacity for there to be some conversation at least. That, like, whatever you think about the geopolitics, this is not good for the hundreds, millions of people in Yemen right who could die in a famine because the RGC and the Houthis are

fighting against the Saudis and their proxies in Yemen so just if you want to just talk about saving lives and just you know put aside the geopolitics of it like figuring out a way to cool things off would be in the interest and what's interesting is you know the Saudis and Emirates were pushing back against that they got everything they wanted in the Trump administration totally siding with them you know 100% on their side on every question. And look what it's gotten them. Right. They're deeper into the quicksand in Yemen.

They're opening fucking embassies in Damascus. Yeah. You know? So they got what they wanted. And guess what? Like they're not taking back Syria. They're not achieving their objectives in Yemen. So they're proving that they're just punching themselves out here. Completely. And I think there's this unchecked hubris of MBS that I hope at some point that the damage that he's creating in that part of the world is stemmed.

because it scares the shit out of me. Yeah, me too. Reading the book, you talk about when your dad came over to the United States. I started Georgetown, ended up transferring to Napa College, right? He said he was the first person ever maybe to make that transfer. Probably only. Yeah, probably only. But there's a great Iranian community and he felt like home.

And also, let's be honest, like living in a Napa is pretty sweet. But he literally opened a Persian rug store. And it was this heady time where he imported this beautiful commodity, this rug to the United States. at a time in the United States that was pre-Islamophobia. Right. And reading that made me so sad to think that there's this horrific strain in our culture that was learned and was learned in like 1981. And I just, it broke my heart.

And I don't know, I just, I wondered what you thought when you hear him talk about that period. Well, I think for most Iranians who've been in America since before the revolution, this is part of our tragedy. We were a growing immigrant group, but not a big one, pretty successful. If you look back at the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. had obviously a massive presence in Iran in terms of military, intelligence, diplomatic, commercial, but also peace corps. It was a place that we were really helping to kind of develop the rural areas, educate people, give them better lives.

And on the flip side of that, there were more Iranians studying in American colleges than people from any other country for years up until the revolution. So this was like, you know, a trend of coming together of these two countries, the likes of which we don't see very often with other countries. And so to have this very definitive kind of flag thrown down or flag burned. Yeah. This is the case here that really changed the course of this relationship and changed it forever. It's stunning and tragic at the same time. Is that a flag moment when the hostages were taken in the embassy? Hossage were taken and the Islamic Republic was born.

We're coming up on the 40th anniversary in a couple of weeks, February 11th. And when the ties were severed, I don't think anybody thought it would take this long and all of this water would pass under the bridge. but still Iranians have become the most highly educated, highest income non-European immigrant group that we have in this country. We're thriving. We're thriving even though at various times in the last 40 years, and I still get this, you know, go back to where you come from.

And I said, you want me to go back to Marin County? Yeah, yeah. It's not bad. There's a bunch of us over there and we'll do fine, you know? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a beautiful book. It's an incredible story. we are so glad you are here to tell it to us in person, and everyone should buy the book.

Yeah, they really should. I mean, this is one, there's some books that come and go, right, and you're like, oh, that might be interesting. Like, there's not another book that you're going to read like this one, right? Like, this is the only book that can tell a story quite like this by someone who is a writer before they were a prisoner, right? So you have a reporter's eye to your own experience that comes across and an analyst eye, but also just as you said, like it's a human story, a love story.

and thankfully the happy ending is here in terms of your presence. Don't you dare wait for the movie. Yeah, and hopefully there's a happy ending to this bigger story. Well, I appreciate, I appreciate you guys having me on, and I appreciate you, Ben, for opening up to me during, you know, the time that I was kind of researching this book and also pointing me in different directions. Yeah, I remember that well.

You know, I think a lot of people will read it, and I hope it comes off as seamless, but, you know, there's a lot of information that it was gathered after the fact to put this document together. Yeah, now you had to report it. Yeah, I report my own story, which is something that, you know, I wouldn't wish on anybody.

But I'm glad I'm finished with it. Jason, good to see you. Thanks, guys. Thanks, yeah.