How foreign hostages have become a lucrative business for Iran

Foreign nationals and people of dual nationalities in Iran now have more reason to fear being arrested and incarcerated by security forces. That's because the ruling regime now has more incentive to take hostages and ransom them to their respective countries for handsome amounts.

What led us here? The failed policy aimed at taming the nefarious activities of the Iranian regime through concessions and appeasement. In January, the U.S. government and the Iranian regime performed a prisoner swap, which also involved Washington paying $1.7 billion in hard cash to Tehran, including $400 million that was forked over to Iran on the same day that the American hostages were released.

While the Obama administration maintains the payout was not a ransom and was unrelated to the prisoner exchange, others beg to differ, including members of Congress. So do Iranian officials, who boasted after the fact and have now become more aggressive in their hostage-taking tactics in order to extract more from their western counterparts.

In fact, recent months have seen a significant increase in the Iranian regime's actions against foreigners visiting the country. Since the January prisoner swap, at least six dual-national Iranians have been arrested, and others have received heavy prison sentences from the Iranian regime's judiciary under bogus charges of acting against the state.