TEHRAN — (CNN) Iran arrested an Iranian-American while he was visiting the country this month, several U.S. news outlets reported — a detention that would bring to five the number of Americans detained or unaccounted for in the Islamic republic.
Siamak Namazi, a Dubai-based businessman with dual U.S. and Iranian citizenship, was detained while visiting relatives in Tehran, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources. The Washington Post also reported his detention, citing a family friend who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Post reported that it wasn’t clear what Namazi is alleged to have done.
Namazi would be the first U.S. citizen reported to have been detained in Iran since this year’s announcement of an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.
CNN’s calls to the office of a spokesman of Iran’s judiciary Friday, a day when Iranian government offices are closed, were not answered.
Reports of Namazi’s capture came ahead of Friday’s multinational meeting in Austria about how to pursue peace in war-torn Syria. The United States invited Iranian officials to that meeting — a rare case of diplomatic interaction between the nations.
U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, on Friday lamented Iran’s participation in the meeting, in part because Iran is holding American citizens. He said it gives “the Iranians greater respectability on the (world) stage while they’re holding hostages as political leverage.”
“I don’t know the supposed justifications of holding him,” Thornberry, who also is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN on Friday morning when asked about Namazi’s situation in Iran.
The National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based advocacy group, said Thursday it was troubled by reports that Namazi was detained.
“NIAC is very concerned by the continued detention of multiple Iranian-Americans by the Iranian government, and is deeply troubled by the reports that Mr. Namazi may also have been detained,” the group said on its website.
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