Last week, Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer were released from an Iranian prison after more than two years of captivity.
Just one month into an eight-year sentence for espionage and illegal border crossing, they appear to be in relatively good shape, and aren’t claiming any serious abuse.
Which is good to hear, especially considering that both men appear to be, by all available evidence, completely innocent.
Fattal, Bauer and a third American, Sarah Shourd, who was released a year ago, were hiking in northern Iraq in July 2009 when they allegedly crossed the unmarked border with Iran.
They were quickly arrested by Iranian authorities, and jailed on suspicion of spying for the U.S.
All three hikers have consistently denied any charge of spying, and the American government has backed them up. Western media outlets have probed into their backgrounds, finding little and less to support the charge.
Iranian officials, meanwhile, have produced no public evidence, basing the convictions on closed courtroom proceedings. Iraqi witnesses claim the hikers had not even crossed the border.
So overall, eight years seems to be a little stiff.
Or it would in a case that had anything to do with them as people. But from the moment they were taken into custody, this case had nothing to do with Fattal, Bauer and Shourd. It had everything to do with the U.S., the U.N. and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
For two years, these people served as small pawns in a very large chess match. They were used, it’s safe to say, by almost everyone. In the U.S., they were important enough for righteous moralizing, but not action.
In Iran, they became leverage between increasingly hostile political factions; a weapon, alternately, of the secular against the theocratic, and vice-versa.
Internationally, they were a public relations gimmick.
Carefully held until the right opportunity, their release was first announced to coincide with important U.N. meetings, a grand humanitarian gesture.
In fiction, symbols often become something more than human. More important, more empowered, more significant. But in the real world, they can sometimes become less.
Powerless and, as individuals, completely unimportant, they are moved around by others with little regard for their wellbeing.
The wrongful conviction of a person is great injustice. But the conviction of a symbol can be sacrifice.
Not that there’s really a whole lot to be done, in cases like these. President Barack Obama can make strong suggestions from the Oval Office, but he’s hardly going to fight a war to free three people.
Sure, we’ve done that stuff before. The 1989 Iranian hostage crisis, comes to mind, as does Grenada.
But in each of those cases, we acted to save symbols, and not people, from weak bad guys we could use in the same way.
It was unfortunate that Iran chose to manipulate these hikers. But it was damn good that the U.S. decided to play along; Fattal, Bauer and Shourd’s personal crisis wasn’t one to move a nation. But their symbolic crisis kept them safe.
Reach the columnist at john.a.gaylord@asu.edu
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