Advocates for at least four American nationals who were jailed in Iran before the U.S.-Israeli strikes started are growing increasingly concerned about their safety, as intense bombing continues across the country.
Two of those U.S. nationals have been named publicly: 49-year-old Journalist Abdolreza “Reza” Valizadeh, whom the U.S. State Department formally designated as “wrongfully detained” by Iran in May 2025, and 61-year-old Kamran Hekmati, who was arrested in July 2025 while visiting family in Iran.
Both were being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison before the war started. There has been no confirmed information on their whereabouts or condition since then.
Nonprofit groups say they are tracking at least two other U.S. nationals believed to be detained in Iran, whose identities CBS News cannot confirm.
“Evin Prison, we know, has been a military target by the Israeli government before in the past. During the 12-day war [between Israel and Iran in June 2025], it was actually bombed. So we have this risk of Evin Prison being hit in some kind of kinetic military strike,” said Kieran Ramsey, a retired FBI assistant director and chief investigative officer at the Global Reach organization, which works to bring home Americans wrongfully held abroad.
“Then we have the risk of reprisals by other prisoners and by guards at the prison, because Kamran is American. He’s also Jewish. So our concerns continue to escalate as every day goes by,” Ramsey told CBS News.
“The IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, had put the neighborhood of Evin Prison on notice that residents should depart to avoid air attack. So, obviously prisoners within Evin don’t have that same luxury,” Ryan Fayhee, a lawyer representing Valizadeh and a partner at the law firm Akin Gump, told CBS News. “It’s totally black for us. We aren’t able to communicate with Reza or his family in Tehran. And so it must be just, truly, he must be feeling very helpless right now.”
CBS News spoke to Joe Bennett, the son of British prisoners Lindsay and Craig Foreman, who were also being held at Evin Prison. Bennett is able to have daily phone calls with his mother, who, earlier this week, reported explosions so close to the prison that windows were blown out. As of Friday, she remained at the prison and able to make her daily calls.
Who are Reza Valizadeh and Kamran Hekmati?
Valizadeh became a U.S. citizen in 2022 after working for the U.S. government-funded broadcaster Radio Farda, the Persian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
He believed he had received assurances that it was safe for him to return to Iran, where most of his family lives, but days after arriving in Tehran in 2024 for a visit, he was detained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and taken to Evin Prison.
Valizadeh Family via AP
He spent weeks under intense interrogation and in isolation, and Iranian officials did not publicly acknowledge his arrest for almost two months. In December 2024, Valizadeh was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being charged with “collaborating with a hostile government,” according to a petition filed in January by his attorney with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Since then, his family says Valizadeh, who has asthma, has suffered from coughing fits and been denied medications.
“As somebody who’s represented Americans wrongfully detained in the past, this is a very, highly unusual situation where our ability to advocate for Reza obviously is muted right now with the military strikes,” Fayhee told CBS News. “It’s difficult to imagine what a lawyer can do for Reza, other than to ask the U.S. and the Israelis to exercise extreme caution in the area around Evin Prison. And Reza is not the only American citizen within the walls of Evin.”
Hekmati, who lives in Long Island and runs a jewelry business in New York City, immigrated to the U.S. from Iran after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, his advocates from the nonprofit Global Reach, which works to secure the release of Americans wrongfully held abroad, say.
He had traveled to Iran a number of times because of an urgent family matter, but was prevented from leaving in May last year and eventually arrested in July. He was then charged under a law that prohibits Iranian citizens from visiting Israel within a decade of entering Iran, his advocates say, though they say he hadn’t been to Israel for 13 years. He was later sentenced on an additional charge of meeting with agents of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
Iran’s history of wrongful detentions
The day before the U.S. and Israel launched their strikes on Iran, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Iran as the first ever State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention. The designation was created last fall, after President Trump issued an Executive Order to Protect U.S. Nationals from Wrongful Detention Abroad.
“When the Iranian regime seized power 47 years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini consolidated his control of power by endorsing the hostage taking of U.S. embassy staff,” Rubio said in a statement at the time. “For decades, Iran has continued to cruelly detain innocent Americans, as well as citizens of other nations, to use as political leverage against other states. This abhorrent practice must end.”
Valideza’s lawyer says U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner went into the most recent negotiations with Iran, before the war started, with Valideza’s name on a list.
“The military strikes have interrupted what I hoped was a conversation about Reza. I will say this: If the Iranians are looking for an off-ramp … that’s to release American citizens that are being held, including Reza, including Kamran Hekmati,” Fayhee said.
Ramsay, the retired FBI assistant director, also suggested the American prisoners could present a potential diplomatic solution for the conflict.
“We hear a lot of different reasons as to why this war has started and what the end goals are. Things like no more enrichment of nuclear material, no more ballistic missiles, no use of proxies. We want a fourth thing added to that, and that is Iran ceases and desists all hostage diplomacy,” Ramsay told CBS News.
Ramsay said there also could be other options to get the detainees home.
“I have 30-plus years in the federal government behind me, and had you asked me … maybe last year or the year before, was things like a rescue operation possible for this? And I would have told you no. But when we look at what this administration did in Venezuela with Maduro, I would say everything’s on the table.”
A State Department spokesperson told CBS News on Friday that it was aware of reports of Americans detained in Iran prior to February 27, and that it seeks to provide consular support. The spokesperson said Iran should immediately release all Americans detained in the country.
“President Trump has been clear that he wants every American wrongfully detained to be returned home safe and sound, and that there will be dire consequences for regimes who treat Americans as political pawns,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement to CBS News on Friday.