The daughter of an environmentalist, Tara Tahbaz, who is currently imprisoned in Iran, has expressed her loss of confidence in President Joe Biden’s efforts to secure her father’s release.
Her father, Morad Tahbaz, who holds dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, was convicted of spying and has already served five years of a ten-year sentence.
He was granted temporary release to house arrest with an electronic tag in March of 2022 when two other dual nationals, including British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, were allowed to leave Iran.
In July, it was reported that he had been granted bail, but his daughter stated that he is now back in jail.
Tara Tahbaz, who visited Madrid from the United States to see relatives, expressed her disappointment with the Biden administration’s lack of action.
She cited the administration’s assurances that their loved ones are a priority since Biden took office, but the lack of progress has made it hard to maintain hope.
Tara hopes Biden will grant her family and the relatives of two other U.S. prisoners in Iran the opportunity to share their stories at a meeting in Washington, D.C., scheduled for next month.
Tara shared that her father, who is now 67 years old, has prostate cancer and has had COVID-19 three times while in jail.
The United States government has called for the release of Tahbaz and two other citizens, Emad Shargi and Siamak Namazi, who are also imprisoned on espionage charges that the U.S. government considers baseless.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, Vedant Patel, tweeted on Saturday, reiterating the government’s call for Iran to release the three individuals.
Patel stated, “We once again call on Iran to cease unjustly imprisoning foreign nationals for use as political leverage and to release U.S. citizens Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and Siamak Namazi.”
Namazi, an oil executive, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016 for charges of spying and cooperating with the U.S. government. He was also convicted of spying in 2021 and received a ten-year sentence.
