UK – Iran Wire, Oct. 22, 2025
When Siamak Namazi was blindfolded and driven to Evin Prison two days before his 44th birthday, in 2015, he laughed. The absurdity was too cruel to ignore.
A year earlier, his girlfriend had also blindfolded him, but for a surprise birthday party. When he removed the blindfold, he saw friends, family, and loved ones all cheering.
This time, on October 13, 2015, the blindfold meant something entirely different: the beginning of an eight-year nightmare inside the Islamic Republic’s most notorious prison.
“How much can a person’s life change in one year?” Namazi asked in his first extensive interview since his release, in a four-hour conversation with journalist Hossein Razzaq.
Two years after his release, at the age of 52, the Iranian-American businessman has finally broken his silence to offer a harrowing account of life as a hostage of the Islamic Republic – and “hostage” is exactly how he describes it, rather than “prisoner” or “inmate.”
“Until we turn you into billions of dollars, we won’t release you,” his interrogators told him again and again.
Namazi’s story reveals the brutal machinery of the Iranian government’s hostage diplomacy – a system that has ensnared dozens of dual-national citizens in recent years.
Namazi’s tale stretches across 27 months in solitary confinement, savage beatings, psychological torture in which interrogators used his elderly father to exert pressure, and the humiliation of being sold like merchandise in a prisoner exchange.
But his story is also one of resilience, dark humor in the face of cruelty, and the long road to recovery that continues today.
