\n Advocates for US citizens detained in Iran said Friday that they are hopeful their cases will be raised in US-Iran negotiations that begin on Saturday.\n <\/p>\n
\n Kamran Hekmati and Reza Valizedeh have both been detained in Iran for more than a year, believed to be held in Tehran\u2019s notorious Evin Prison. There are mounting concerns about their health and well-being. Both have been designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department.\n <\/p>\n
\n Family advocates said they have received assurances that the negotiating team, led by Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, is aware of the detained Americans and that they will raise their status during upcoming negotiations.\n <\/p>\n
\n Another source familiar with the matter said their names have been conveyed in the past to the negotiating team, but they could not say whether they will definitely be raised in the talks on Saturday.\n <\/p>\n
\n Valizadeh, an Iranian-American journalist, had worked in exile for Persian language outlets, including the US-funded Radio Farda. He returned to Iran in March 2024 to visit his elderly parents and was arrested in September of that year.\n <\/p>\n
\n Hekmati was arrested last year and sentenced to prison time by Iranian authorities for visiting Israel more than a decade ago for his son\u2019s bar mitzvah, according to family members who spoke to CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n Before the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the Trump administration designated Iran as a state sponsor of wrongful detention.\n <\/p>\n
\n In remarks in early March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned Iran as \u201cthe worst offenders in the world of hostage-taking.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Advocates for US citizens detained in Iran said Friday that they are hopeful their cases will be raised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-386873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}