‘I hope they take their time in their recovery’

Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva looked joyful, relieved, and perhaps a bit dazed as they stepped onto U.S. soil last Thursday night.

The three, freed in a historic prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S. and four European nations, were reunited on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland with family members they hadn’t seen in more than a year, and for Whelan, in six years. 

Few can truly understand the feelings the three Americans experienced in those first moments of freedom. Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian is one of them.

While serving as the newspaper’s Tehran bureau chief, Rezaian and his journalist wife, Yeganeh Salehi, were arrested without cause in 2014 by the Iranian government. Salehi was released on bail weeks later. Rezaian, who like Gershkovich became a cause célèbre in journalism circles, was held for 544 days before being released in a January 2016 deal between Iran and the U.S.

Rezaian, a global opinions writer for the Post and host of the “544 Days” podcast, spoke with the Gazette about what it’s like to suddenly regain one’s freedom after a long period of captivity. He was a Spring 2023 resident fellow at the Institute of Politics and a 2017 Nieman Fellow. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Not many know what these people have gone through and will go through now that they’re home. Tell me about those final days and hours before your release. What was going through your mind?

It was a lot of exhilaration but also continued anxiety and tension that started to dissipate once I got on the plane and realized that this was the end of it. There are so many false starts, false promises that happen in the span of your detention that it’s hard to believe that it’s real. Our deal almost fell through at the very last minute while I was at the airport. It’s an episode in my life, and certainly in those 544 days, that stands out in my memory as being very charged.

How much time elapsed between finding out a deal had been struck and stepping off the plane in Germany?

They had told me about 10 days in advance that this was going to happen. And there were reasons to believe that that was the case. The Iran nuclear deal was on the verge of being consummated. But there were a lot of twists and turns in that last week and a half or so. It was 24 hours between the time I was taken from my cell for the last time and when I got on the plane.

Did you have to manage your emotions or expectations so as to not get your hopes up?

If you read the second-to-last chapter of my book [“Prisoner” (2019)], it gives a very precise timeline of what was going on. Ultimately, the Iranian side was trying to renege on essential part of the deal, which was allowing my wife to leave. I didn’t know that was part of the deal. They had been telling me during those last days after I was told that I was being released, that she wouldn’t be coming with me.

I had no way to check if that was the case or not. And it was probably 10 o’clock at night, at the airport, when the Swiss ambassador came to ensure that everything was as it should be. And he said, “Where are your wife and your mother? They’re supposed to be here.”

And I said, “The Revolutionary Guard told me that my wife [who is Iranian] can’t come because she’s not American.” And he said, “I’ve been part of these negotiations for 14 months. Your wife has been a part of it from the very beginning.” So, there was a lot of doubt and the ways that they continue to harass you right up until the end are pretty nasty.

Whelan, Gershkovich, and Kurmasheva have finally been reunited with their families. Do you remember what that moment felt like?

My mother and wife were in Tehran, and I had had the opportunity to see them a day, maybe two days, before we left. And then to go through that moment of being told, “No, they’re not coming” and then to “Yes, they were” and then we’re on a plane with other Americans, and we’re going home. That was a huge relief.

Seeing my brother when we got to Germany the next day and having my brother be reliably himself, kind of nonplussed by the moment and normal, I think that was the moment where I thought to myself, “Okay. Not only is that over, but some things haven’t changed.”

When did it sink in that your ordeal was really and truly over?

Sitting on the plane on the tarmac in Tehran and looking at the skyline of a city that I had lived in for the past several years and that I thought would be my home for a long time, I think that was the first moment where I thought to myself, “OK, this is over. This horrific experience is over, but also this chapter of my life in this country is over.”

You were treated quite harshly during the 18 months you were imprisoned. Was there a process of adjustment you went through after you returned?

Huge. It was a long process. One difference in my case than the cases of some of these folks was I was isolated the whole time, first in solitary confinement, and then with just one other cellmate for the entire time, so I didn’t have a lot of social interactions.

Getting back to that, being able to see people and to relate to different kinds of people of my own choosing, but also, everyday life. I had worked for The Washington Post, but I was an anonymous person before all this happens, and then I couldn’t go anywhere for quite a long time without people recognizing me.

So that reintegration — I guess you could say integration because you’re coming back to a brand-new life that wasn’t like what you experienced before, and your relationships are very different — took a long time. I would say it’s still a work in progress.

Do you have any advice for these folks as they transition back into society?

I hope they take their time in their recovery. I hope that they do the hard work of trying to process and come to terms with what they’ve experienced. I hope that they’re able to reconnect fully with their families.

The one thing that I would say about all of them, and I wish I could go back and really convince myself of this, is they don’t owe anybody anything: their privacy, their time, how they want to spend the rest of their life after having a good chunk of it stolen from them is completely up to them. I hope there are ways, big and small, that I could be supportive. Because it takes a long time to come to that realization if you’re not guided towards it.

You’ve been an outspoken advocate for hostages and political prisoners and for how to think more strategically about disincentivizing the growing practice of hostage-taking. What do you think about this deal?

There are always going to be people who want to politicize the deal and talk about why it was a great deal or why it was a terrible deal. The reality is these people suffered an abuse that they never should have been experienced. The U.S. government and other governments did what was necessary to end that abuse.

That doesn’t do anything, though, for combating this problem long-term. I helped start a commission on hostage policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in Washington, D.C. We’re looking at what do we do to disincentivize this in the future. The answer is not simply don’t do deals. Because the problem isn’t the deal, the problem is there is nothing standing in the way of bad actors like Russia, China, and Iran from doing it and so we have to cultivate mechanisms that make it unattractive.

And I think that quest has to live in parallel with the reality that there are people who have been held for far too long in a variety of countries around the world who need to come home. Those two goals have been seen as conflicting for a long time. I just don’t think that they are conflicting. They are two problems related to the same issue on two different timelines. And if we don’t get to work very quickly on cultivating practical deterrents, opportunities, and tools, we’re going to be facing a lot more of this.