WASHINGTON — The State Department has officially determined that a second American citizen is being “wrongfully detained” in Iran, his family said.
Kamran Hekmati, a 61-year-old Jewish resident of New York, was arrested in July and sentenced to two years in prison for visiting Israel more than a decade ago. Secretary of State Marco Rubio notified his family of the formal designation on Monday, a move that triggers increased resources and attention from the State Department.
“This designation is an official recognition by the US government that Kamran is being held on false charges in an effort by the Iranians to leverage the US government,” Shohreh Nowfar, Hekmati’s cousin, said in a statement.
The State Department’s office for hostage affairs is formally tracking the cases of six Iranian Americans held on what appear to be politically motivated charges.
The detained include Reza Valizadeh, a 49-year-old Iranian American journalist who was arrested in Tehran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in September 2024 in apparent retaliation for his reporting in the Persian-language outlet Radio Farda.
Only Valizadeh and Hekmati are considered “wrongfully detained” by the State Department.
On the eve of the Iran war, Rubio designated Iran as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” for its long history of imprisoning Americans. In his first term, Trump negotiated prisoner swaps with Tehran for the release of Princeton University student Xiyue Wang and Navy veteran Michael White. The Biden administration later authorized the release of $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil revenue for humanitarian use and arranged a similar swap, freeing several Americans held in Iran, including Morad Tahbaz, Siamak Namazi and Emad Shargi.
