After more than a year in detention in Iran, the judiciary in Tehran announced on 19 February that Lindsey and Craig Foreman, British nationals travelling in the country, had been sentenced to ten years in prison. This was not an isolated incident but the latest chapter in a consistent policy of the Islamic Republic: the detention of foreign nationals, or dual Iranian citizens, as instruments of diplomatic leverage. From its earliest days, Tehran has employed this practice to pressure adversaries and extract concessions. The fact that it has yielded tangible gains in the past helps explain why the policy endures, despite repeated Western condemnation.
The formative precedent was the seizure of the United States Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Revolutionary militants took control of the compound and held 66 American diplomats hostage, 52 of whom were released only after more than 400 days. Their eventual release was accompanied by arrangements that included the unfreezing of Iranian assets and a reduction of American pressure. The crisis demonstrated to the new regime the efficacy of hostage-taking as an instrument of statecraft.
The lesson was subsequently applied in dealings with the United Kingdom. In 2016, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian national, was arrested and accused of espionage. She was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and ultimately served six. Her release in March 2022 coincided with the payment by London of approximately £390 million, a long-disputed debt relating to a pre-revolutionary tank contract. Although both sides denied a direct linkage, the timing left limited room for doubt.
Lindsey and Craig Foreman are thus the latest to find themselves ensnared in a familiar pattern. The couple embarked in January 2025 on a round-the-world motorcycle journey and were detained in Iran on unsubstantiated espionage charges. Only after more than a year in harsh conditions was Lindsey permitted to give an interview to the BBC on 19 February; hours later, the pair were subjected to an expedited trial and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
The broader context is difficult to ignore. Shortly before the trial, US President Donald Trump stated on the social media platform Truth Social that Washington might need to use the British base at Diego Garcia or the airfield at RAF Fairford in the event of a potential strike against Iran, writing: “It may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime”. On the very day the Foremans were sentenced, the British government announced that it would not permit the use of its bases for such an operation.
Against this historical backdrop, it is difficult to view the timing as coincidental. The use of foreign nationals as bargaining chips is not an aberration but a recognized practice among authoritarian regimes such as Russia and North Korea, which convert human beings into instruments of political negotiation. Diplomacy, ostensibly conducted between governments, is thereby transformed into a mechanism of coercion directed at private individuals. The repeated recurrence of this method is not merely evidence of Tehran’s ruthlessness, but also of the West’s failure to impose a credible deterrent cost.