Twenty-one months ago almost to the day, three idealistic young Americans were enjoying a summer vacation hike in the safe and hospitable region of Iraqi Kurdistan when they wandered close to or across an unmarked mountain border and into the hands of Iranian forces. It is hard for any of us to appreciate the torment these individuals -- Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd -- and their families have suffered since that fateful day. It is harder still to fathom what Iran expects to gain by continuing to hold the two men in the group captive, with almost no contact with their families, and by putting them on trial on May 11 on the unfounded charge of espionage. Sarah, who is Shane's fiancé, was freed on humanitarian grounds last September yet the judiciary has summoned her back for the trial even though a senior Iranian official, Mohammad Javad Larijani, has said publicly that she is incapable of spying.
Sarah's release after 410 days of solitary confinement was the right thing to do. Iran must do the right thing again by allowing her companions to rejoin their families. Shane and Josh have already been detained for far longer than the 444 days that 52 American citizens spent as hostages in Tehran when the U.S. embassy was stormed following the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979. If Iran's intention in holding Shane and Josh is to show that it can still thumb its nose at America by depriving its citizens of their freedom, it has surely proven the point. And, if the intention is to engineer some sort of prisoner swap, there is no indication that the U.S. government is willing to play ball, given the broader strategic considerations at play in the tense U.S.-Iranian relationship.
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