The Biden administration on Thursday announced new sanctions against the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the intelligence arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for their roles in wrongfully detaining Americans abroad.
“These actors in Russia and Iran have tried to use Americans for political leverage or to seek concessions from the United States,” said one of two senior administration officials who briefed White House reporters Thursday.
In addition to the two entities, sanctions are being slapped on four key figures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization (IRGC-IO), its head Mohammad Kazemi, co-deputy chiefs Mehdi Sayari and Hassan Mohagheghi, and deputy head Ruhollah Bazghandi.
“The FSB has repeatedly been involved in the arrest, investigation and detention of U.S. nationals wrongfully detained in Russia,” he said.
The Biden administration official added that the IRGC-IO “frequently holds and interrogates detainees, including at least one wrongfully detained U.S. national in Evin prison,” a detention facility in Tehran that has a “long and sordid history of human rights abuses including extensive reports of torture.”
The sanctions are the first that were launched under an executive order that President Joe Biden signed last July. More sanctions are expected to be announced.
Some experts are skeptical these sanctions would work to facilitate the release of Americans. In the past, only U.S. acceptance of de facto prisoner swaps, or in the case of Iran, releasing their held assets would change their policies on detained Americans, said Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
“Overall, however, I do not regard this as particularly effective policy, but rather a “tit-for-tat policy” to show the American people, and not least the press corps, that the administration is doing something to get U.S. citizens returned,” he told VOA.
At least two Americans are still detained in Russia: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, held since March, and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive imprisoned since 2018. Both are held based on espionage allegations which their families and the U.S. State Department say are baseless.
Earlier this year, Russia released U.S. Navy Veteran Taylor Dudley, held since April in the Russian province of Kaliningrad.
Several Americans were also freed last year under a prisoner swap, most notably basketball star Brittney Griner.
And U.S. citizens Suedi Murekezi, Alexander John-Robert Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh were among the dozens of individuals released in a prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia in 2022.
There are at least three Americans held by Tehran, including the longest-held American prisoner in the country, Siamak Namazi, arrested in 2015. The others are Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz, both held since 2018.
The three are detained under espionage charges that the U.S. claims to be false. They are said to be held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
