US hostages in Iran face heightened risk as protests spread, experts say number held may exceed estimates

FIRST ON FOX: The Islamic Republic of Iran may have more than eight American citizens and residents in its captivity, Fox News Digital can reveal based on information from sources outside the Trump Administration who are well-versed with Tehran’s hostage-taking policy system.

Information shows that the total number of Americans citizens and residents held hostage by the Iranian regime could exceed the open-source data listing five American hostages in Iran.

Iran’s regime arrested U.S. citizen, Kamran Hekmati, a 70-year-old from Great Neck, New York who went to Iran to visit family members last May. Iranian authorities arrested Hekmati in July 2025 and charged him with "making a trip to Israel" 13 years prior to his visit to Iran. Hekmati, a Persian Jew who was born in Iran, traveled to Israel in 2012 to attend his son’s Bar Mitzvah.

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Iran bans Iranians from traveling to the Jewish state and any relations with Israel. Tehran considers Hekmati an Iranian citizen because the regime does not recognize dual citizenship.

The regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced Hekmati to four years in prison, and he is being held in Iran’s infamous Evin Prison — a complex that is reportedly used to torture political prisoners and dissidents. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) noted Hekmati has also been held at an intelligence ministry facility in Tehran. CNN reported that Hekmati suffers from bladder cancer.

The regime arrested another U.S. citizen, Afarin Mohajer, on Sept. 29, 2025 at Imam Khomeini International Airport. The human rights group, HRANA, said there was no information about the charges leveled against the Californian resident. 

According to U.S. government outlet Radio Farda that reports on Iran, Mohajer has an inoperable brain tumor and was told by "a doctor before going to prison that she does not have long to live," citing her son. She visited Iran to take care of her husband’s finances following his death, the son said. While released in December on bail, she is not allowed to leave Iran.

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The authorities arrested an unnamed Iranian-American woman in December 2024. She was released from prison, but the authorities seized the passports of the dual national, and she is also barred from leaving Iran.

The former Radio Farda journalist Reza Valizadeh traveled to Iran in March 2024 to visit relatives, according to a report by United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) on American hostages held in Iran.  

The U.S. government outlet Voice of America, like Radio Farda, reports on Iran, said Valizadeh was reportedly arrested in September 2024 and charged with "collaborating with overseas-based Persian media."

The charge was later changed to "collaborating with a hostile government." UANI noted that "VOA cited sources claiming that Valizadeh was arrested for not cooperating with the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization and Iran’s intelligence ministry and for not expressing regret for his journalism."

The regime arrested Shahab Dalili, a permanent U.S. resident who lives in Virginia, in 2016.

The UANI report stated that Taghato, a Farsi-language news outlet operated by Iranians living in the U.S., posted on Twitter (now X) that the Iranian regime arrested Dalili in March 2016. He went to Iran after his father’s death. The opaque Iranian regime judicial system sentenced him to 10 years in prison for "allegedly cooperating with a hostile government."

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A U.S. State Department official told Fox News Digital that "As Secretary Rubio has said, President Trump is working to secure the release of detained Americans around the world.  The Iranian regime has a long history of unjustly and wrongfully detaining other countries’ citizens as hostages for use as political leverage. Iran should release these individuals immediately. "

The U.S. official added that "Due to security considerations with respect to ongoing cases, we do not disclose specific numbers of hostages."

Barry Rosen, a former American diplomat and survivor of the Iran hostage crisis that took place in 1979 when Islamist revolutionary students took a group of 66 Americans captive, told Fox News Digital, in the wake of the nationwide revolts against the regime, "We are in a very intractable situation right now" and expressed skepticism about bringing the hostages back under the current situation.

The nationwide strikes and demonstrations to topple the regime with respect to securing the hostage’s release "make it even more complicated," Rosen said, adding that hostage diplomacy "has always been complicated." Rosen was evetually released having spent 444 days in captivity.

"Quiet diplomacy is the best way to go, but I don’t think there is any way for quiet diplomacy right now," he said.

When discussing "quiet diplomacy," Rosen said he was "talking about dealing with the hostage situation with Iran, given all our differences on the nuclear situation between both countries. But when it comes to the uprising in Iran, we need to loudly support a democratic Iran."

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Rosen, who considers Iran his second home, said, "I want to see the Iranian people do what they are doing now, so the Iranian regime implodes by itself." He said, "Support for uprisings (and protests) is the right way to go. I am fearful of any military operations that could cause chaos in the country."

Rosen co-founded the non-government organization Hostage Aid Worldwide, which provides current information on hostages held outside the U.S.

Navid Mohebbi, who worked as a Persian media analyst for the U.S. State Department's Public Affairs Bureau, wrote a booklet on "Breaking the Trend: How to Combat the Hostage-Taking Business in Iran" for the U.S.-based National Union for Democracy in Iran.

He told Fox News Digital, "Iran’s hostage-taking is not a series of isolated cases; it is a systematic state policy designed to extract political and economic concessions. The Islamic Republic has learned that detaining Americans and other Western nationals carries little cost and often produces tangible rewards — whether sanctions relief, access to frozen assets or asymmetric prisoner swaps. As long as this behavior is treated as a humanitarian problem rather than a coercive strategy, Tehran will continue to rely on hostage-taking as a core tool of statecraft."

He continued, "To reverse this pattern, the United States must impose consequences that are measurable, cumulative and irreversible. Every hostage-taking case should trigger automatic penalties: targeted sanctions on judges, prosecutors, interrogators, prison officials and intelligence officers involved; permanent confiscation — not escrow — of regime assets tied to hostage diplomacy; and coordinated diplomatic consequences with allies, including travel bans, removal of regime officials from international bodies and the pursuit of Interpol red notices where applicable. The message must be unambiguous: hostage-taking will leave the regime worse off, not better."

Mohebbi urged that, "The U.S. should formally designate Iran as a state that engages in hostage-taking, ban the use of U.S. passports for travel to or through Iran and maintain a public registry of regime officials involved in these crimes. At the same time, Washington must provide stronger, more transparent support to families of hostages and ensure sustained public naming and shaming. Only by raising the cost across legal, diplomatic, financial and reputational fronts can the United States begin to dismantle Iran’s hostage-taking business," he said.