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Shane Bauer: "When I Was a Prisoner in Iran, I Came to Fear the Sound of Hillary Clinton's Voice"
link; excerpt:
I rarely think about being a prisoner in Iran anymore. I've been free for more than four years. It's been a long time since the sounds of hard soles on a cement floor would remind me of my interrogator .... Last Saturday, I was dripping coffee on myself during an early morning drive when I heard that four Americans were being released from Iran as part of a prisoner swap. Suddenly, my eyes welled up. I could feel the knot of excitement and confusion that had turned in my gut when my plane from Tehran hit the tarmac in Muscat, Oman, in September 2011. ... I was elated for these men and their families.... While scouring the internet for updates on the four Americans, I read that shortly after their release, Hillary Clinton called for new sanctions on Iran for testing two ballistic missiles last year. I was shocked. The prisoners had not yet been let out of the country. Why would she provoke Iran when their freedom was still on the line?
I remembered sitting in my cell in 2009...when I heard then-Secretary of State Clinton's voice from a television in a neighboring cell. I ran to the door and pressed my ear into its little window. She was commanding Iran to release us immediately. My heart sank. ... I came to fear the sound of Clinton's voice. Whenever I heard her publicly slam Iran about something, I would mentally prepare for at least another couple of months in prison.
Though I didn't know it at the time, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Many of our family members grew frustrated with their meetings with her and White House officials. My wife, Sarah, who was released a year before Josh and I were, shared this frustration. Once, during a meeting with us in the prison, Swiss Ambassador Livia Leu, who represented American interests in Iran, broke from her usual reassuring demeanor and said, "They will never respond to your government demanding they release you. They need to talk to the Iranians."... Our freedom was part of a larger calculus for Oman. Sitting at the mouth of the Persian Gulf just a couple hundred miles from Iran, Oman's government believed that if tensions between Iran and the United States escalated to the point of military conflict, it would damage its economy—or worse. Salem believed that if he could get the two countries to negotiate over our case, it would provide an opening for talks on Iran's nuclear program. ...During Salem's efforts to free us, he was repeatedly frustrated by Clinton. "Why can't your Hillary just keep quiet?" he blurted to me once, in a break of his characteristic poise, on a visit to Evin Prison. It was a paternalistic sounding outburst, but the stakes were high. He believed he was going to be bringing us home with him on that occasion. He said he was so close to convincing the Iranians, but they backed out at the last minute after another blustery statement by Clinton.
So far as we know, the extent of Clinton's role in our ordeal was limited to making public demands and speaking to our families. In fact, there isn't evidence of much action from the US government on our case. Two years ago, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the State Department, CIA, and FBI for records on our case. I received some records only after suing. The lawsuit is ongoing, but the records I have received over the last year indicate State Department officials did little beyond meeting with our families and receiving news reports from staffers.
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