BRIAN EGAN AND JOCELYN HUTTON transferred to an unknown location for what is likely to have been torture and coercive interrogation. Furthermore, Kavous Seyed-Emami, 62 a Canadian-Iranian environmentalist, died under suspicious circumstances in February 2018 while detained and interrogated by the IRGC. Although government officials stated that Seyed-Emami committed suicide, the CHRI has released video footage of the dual national’s cell which shows no evidence of suicide.63 There have been consistent reports of denial to medical treatment for those with chronic illness.64 and foreign nationals as bargaining chips in political and economic discussions with the West.”68 Counsel for Nahid Taghavi, a detained GermanIranian dual national, has argued that Taghavi “is a victim of political hostage-taking and the arbitrary judicial system of Iran.”69 On a more macro-political scale, the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has implored the British government to “call the arbitrary detention of foreign nationals what it is: hostage taking.”70 Finally, 58 member states of the United Nations issued a statement in February 2021 denouncing the “use of arbitrary detention in state-to-state relations,” explicitly There are three overarching ulterior motives condemning it as “hostage diplomacy.” Although for arbitrary detention of these dual nationals. Iran was not explicitly mentioned, a member of the Firstly, the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Canadian Western countries. Secondly, and as an extension Reuters, said that this motion was implemented due of this, the role of Western sanctions on the Iranian to “concern over arrests by foreigners from China, economy. Thirdly, the Iranian government often Iran, Russia and North Korea.”71 seeks reciprocal prisoner swaps to repatriate Iranians incarcerated abroad. It should also be noted that internal power struggles play a role, as the IRGC and various judicial hardliners seek to undermine the presiding government’s relative liberalisation towards Western diplomacy.65 As Janne Christensen reminds us in her discussion of Iranian ‘drug diplomacy,’ these policies are rarely neatly bounded. Instead, “policies are political spaces that are deeply contested and take on a complex social life of their own.”66 delegation speaking separately to This ‘hostage-taking’ ebbs and flows with nuclear negotiations. For example, Sharafedin notes that “the [current] number marks a sharp rise since 2015, when an international nuclear deal raised hopes of detente with the West. In the years before that the number of dual nationals detained at any given time was in single figures.”72 In 2016, nuclear deal breakthroughs resulted in a reciprocal prisoner exchange with the United States.73 Since then, Iran has restrengthened its position by detaining six American-Iranian dual nationals.74 The CHRI argues Arbitrary detention of dual Iranian and foreign that the situation has ‘deteriorated’ in recent years, nationals on spurious national security or espionage despite a new US administration and the charges has been repeatedly denounced by various resumption of fresh nuclear talks between Iran and NGOs and politicians. Haedi Ghaemi, the Director of the the CHRI, has denounced the long-standing practice as ‘hostage-taking’ whereby the regime has sought to acquire ‘political pawns.’67 Iran Human Rights and Together against the Death Penalty/Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM) have noted that the regime has “used dual nationals UN Security Council’s Permanent Five 75 members, plus Germany (P5+1). Although the Iranian administration has denied that dual nationals are detained for realpolitikal bargaining, this has been openly contradicted by official rhetoric of a ready willingness to swap 9