In a controversial prisoner exchange between Sweden and Iran, a convicted Iranian torturer Hamid Noury was traded for two Swedish citizens. Noury had committed severe human rights abuses, yet Iran secured his return in exchange for releasing the Swedes falsely accused of espionage and other charges. This exchange highlights Iran’s tactic of “hostage diplomacy,” using Western citizens as bargaining chips to exert pressure and gain concessions. It questions whether Western nations should continue diplomatic engagement with regimes willing to flout international law, posing a dilemma between protecting citizens and upholding principles.

On June 15, the Swedish government announced that it had conducted a prisoner exchange with Iran’s regime. An Iranian citizen, Hamid Noury, was exchanged for two Swedish citizens, Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi.

Noury stood convicted by a Swedish court of the torture and mass execution of political prisoners he had committed in Iran’s Gohardasht prison in the late 1980s, following a fatwa from Iran’s then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In November 2019, Noury was lured to Sweden by some Iranians with promises of luxury trips, parties, and female companionship. At Arlanda Airport, Noury was met by Swedish police, and in July 2022, he was sentenced for his crimes to life imprisonment by the Stockholm District Court

As for the Swedish citizens, Johan Floderus, a European Union official, was arrested on April 17, 2022 while on vacation in Iran, and was accused of spying for Israel and spreading “corruption on earth.” The prosecutor demanded that Floderus be sentenced to death.

The other Swedish citizen, Saeed Azizi, who had been diagnosed with cancer four years earlier, travelled to Iran, according to his account, to sell what he had inherited after his mother’s death. When he landed in Tehran, he was placed under house arrest. After five weeks, in November 2023, he was formally arrested by the authorities, accused of having connections with the Swedish intelligence services, and sentenced to five years in prison.

The allegations against Floderus and Azizi are evidently baseless. Iran, however, had already shown that it is willing to execute foreign visitors on spurious charges. Another Swedish citizen, Habib Chaab, was abducted by Iranian regime agents in Turkey in 2020, smuggled into Iran, convicted of spreading “corruption on earth” and executed in May 2023. The specific accusations were that Chaab had, in collusion with Israel’s Mossad and Swedish intelligence, ostensibly planned terrorist attacks against Iran.

Citizens from other European countries and the United States have also been affected by these arrests, now being called “hostage diplomacy“. In September 2023, the US handed over $6 billion in frozen assets to Iran to conduct yet another prisoner exchange. Belgium carried out a similar prisoner exchange by releasing a terrorist back to Iran last year.

The governments of Sweden and other countries that have conducted such prisoner exchanges have found themselves in a dilemma. How can they not prioritize the lives and safety of their citizens — especially when they are held hostage by a regime that has shown a willingness to execute foreigners? A government must prioritize the safety of its citizens. It is to be expected of all governments. Is a prisoner exchange or some form of agreement to get their citizens out of Iran the only option? The problem, of course, is that prisoner exchanges have serious consequences.

Hamid Noury, handed over to Iran in the prisoner exchange and welcomed in Tehran as a hero, had been convicted with adequate evidence of serious violations of international law: torture and mass executions. That Iran can, through hostage-taking and extortion, force countries such as the United States, Belgium and Sweden to hand over a convicted criminal who has clearly violated international law shows that gangster methods, used by the Iranian mullahs and others, evidently carry more weight than international law.

This blackmail essentially teaches rogue states that through violence and extortion they can get Western states to make concessions, massive payments, and to de-prioritize and deviate from international law.

If a state takes foreign visitors hostage, and all power then lies with those who kidnap the most, threaten the most and have the largest capacity for violence — including the imminent probability of nuclear weapons — then international law will soon mean nothing.

If rogue regimes are not held seriously accountable, Iran and similar states will in the future invest even more in hostage-taking, terrorism and other forms of malign behavior. They will see that fabricated prisoner exchanges pay off and lead to Western, democratic countries such as Sweden simply abandoning international law. Violence will be seen as the easy way to overtake rule-based world order.

These are just some of the consequences of Iran’s prisoner exchanges with Sweden and other countries. If dictators see that through violent methods they can undermine international law, then why would they not continue to do so?

In the end, some of the blame lies with the “bait”: the Swedish and other Western citizens who travel to the lawless countries such as Iran and give those regimes a strong position with which to be able to blackmail the West. Sweden and other democratic countries cannot in any way protect human rights if regimes such as Iran’s can capriciously take foreigners hostage and use them for blackmail.

As long as citizens from Western democracies continue to travel to Iran, they put themselves in danger, as well as potentially eroding global security and international law.

Iran’s Islamist regime, as well as others with similar practices, follow no international laws. Apart from effectively having a public budget to support terrorism, Iran’s regime acts as lawlessly as the regimes of Russia or North Korea, and behaves in general as terrorists.

Regarding Iranians with dual citizenship from Sweden or other Western countries, who travel back to Iran, one wonders how they can go back there when many came to the West as refugees. Were they refugees in the first place? If the answer is yes, how can they then travel back to Iran? Have they been forgiven by the regime in Tehran? If so, why?

With people such as Floderus, the problem is probably atrocious judgment. After returning to Sweden, he proposed to his boyfriend. Congratulations, but didn’t he know that in Iran they hang homosexuals from cranes (here, here and here)? How can one, as a gay man, go on vacation to Iran when homosexuality is a crime punishable by death there?

Should the Swedish government and other countries protect themselves and their citizens by issuing travel advisories, or warning citizens that if they travel to such countries they are on their own — their government will not be able to help them? Or should travel to such countries be banned altogether? What is the trade-off for what might be called a violation of their civil liberties?

More Western countries might need to understand that their citizens travelling to countries such as Iran, which engages in hostage diplomacy, is not sustainable. It gives countries that use such blackmail too much of an advantage to exploit the West and possibly even affect foreign policy.

Right now, the European Union is moving towards designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. How many hostages could Iran take to stop this process? It seems clear that hostage diplomacy is a deliberate strategy for Iran and Russia’s current regimes. Why should it not be? It works!

Countries in the West might do well to communicate this situation and disclaim responsibility for anyone who, despite that lawlessness, chooses to travel to Russia, Iran, or other such states. Hostage diplomacy must be stopped.

Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a Member of Parliament in the Swedish Riksdag. This article was originally published at GateStone Institute and is republished here with permission.