A Pyrrhic bargain with Iran

In the predawn hours in late September, five Americans released from years of wrongful captivity in Iran landed at Virginia’s Fort Belvoir. Accompanied by cheers and applause, they climbed down from their aircraft—reportedly the same jet that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner home from her detention in Russia—and fell into the arms of long-waiting loved ones. They were set free as part of an agreement that included clemency for five Iranians in U.S. custody as well as the release of nearly $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets. The deal should be both celebrated and rued.

On the one hand, innocent Americans unlawfully detained by a rogue regime have come home. The American president, like any sovereign power, has a moral—indeed, God-given—responsibility to provide for the peace and security of his political community. This includes the provision and defense of order and justice for individual Americans at home or abroad. Americans who unjustifiably languish in foreign prisons should never fear their nation has forgotten them. In that sense, the day of the release was a good day.

On the other hand, it is neither wise nor responsible to empower adversarial regimes hellbent on misbehavior both in their neighborhood as well as our own. Iran can get up to a lot of proxy war and nuclear mischief with $6 billion. It’s silly to claim, as administration officials have, that agreed-upon restrictions ensure the money will only be spent on food and medicine. Even if such restrictions exist—and were enforceable—money is fungible. Freeing up $6 billion that Iran might have spent feeding its people means Tehran now has $6 billion to finance other far more terrible things. We needn’t work too hard to imagine what those things might be. Right now, Iran is building missiles and drones and sending them to support the Russian assault against Ukraine—whom we are supporting. It now seems likely that we are about to start financing both sides of the fight.

The deal’s complexity grows when we consider short-term gains versus long-term risks. As Mike Pompeo lamented, we’ve just confirmed to every rogue regime a viable business model: steal an American and get flush. To question whether prisoner exchanges or the payment of ransoms is prudent is not to question the intrinsic value of American citizens nor to weigh their freedom against political machinations. It is simply to observe that the current practice is only creating further incentives for further hostage-taking. Whenever deals like the present one are struck to make some Americans safe, other Americans face greater future risk.

There is a historical template, perhaps, that might speak to the present dilemma. Shortly after the American Revolution, Barbary piracy in the Mediterranean brought U.S. shipping to its knees. In order to protect merchant vessels from attack and to ransom trafficked sailors, the United States was eventually paying annual tribute equal to 20 percent of federal expenditures. This wasn’t sustainable. The solution was the founding of the United States Navy. It eventuated in a long-term fix. I have met many U.S. sailors over the years, but not yet a single Barbary pirate.

The U.S. needs a strategy tailored to present times and scalable to specific circumstances to deter hostage-taking. The approach will require a pair of focal points. First, adversaries—whether nations or non-state actors—who think to steal our people must be made to believe they will suffer unbearable repercussions. This approach must employ the entire toolkit: political, diplomatic, economic, and military. Aggression must be deterred by the credible prospect of greater aggression.

But deterring, coercing, and punishing adversarial regimes is not often easy and not always effective. The second focus, therefore, is at home. In certain circumstances Americans simply have to stop going to certain places. The threat levels of particular destinations cannot always be accurately predicted and even low risk places can surprise. But at least we need to take seriously the risks in regimes like Russia, Syria, China, Venezuela, and Iran. Elective travel by businesspersons, humanitarians, missionaries, dual citizens, academics, and simple tourists needs to be reconsidered against personal and national security concerns. This is no easy ask. Readers of a Christian magazine will know the missionary call is never to be too-easily dismissed. Moreover, many of the just-released Americans were in Iran visiting family. Even elective travel is sometimes seemingly essential. But as is often the case, when we put ourselves at risk we put others at risk as well. When we willingly do so, we should not, perhaps, make too many demands on what U.S. foreign policy ought to concede in order to get us back.

Resolving hostage crises after they happen and successfully bringing our people home without empowering and incentivizing rogue regimes is tricky business with long-term ramifications. Better to figure out how to prevent them in the first place.