Jason Rezaian’s imprisonment, release and its meaning

Max Fisher on Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian’a 543 days in Iranian captivity and what it means:

He reported, as a writer for the Washington Post, on stories that humanized Iran and the often-vilified people who live there, as well as on the nascent signs of an opening between the US and Iran for which Jason was hopeful.

Jason also spent that month settling into matrimonial life: he had recently married Yeganeh Salehi, also a Tehran-based journalist, writing for an Abu Dhabi-based newspaper called The National…

The story of Jason’s arrest and 18-month detention is, for those who know him, a personal story, but it is also an inescapably political story. No one can say for sure why Iran chose to arrest him and his wife, but the consensus among most Iran-watchers is that this was probably an effort by Iran’s hard-liners to sabotage the ongoing nuclear negotiations with the United States and other world powers, or at least to exert some influence over them…

Today, on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif met in Vienna with US Secretary of State John Kerry to formally mark what is known, in the odd language of arms control agreements, as “Implementation Day,” the day that the agreement formally begins and that, most significantly, the world lifts many of the sanctions that have devastated Iran’s economy.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.