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00:00An Italian journalist freed after three weeks in Tehran's notorious Evin prison is back
00:05home.
00:0629-year-old Cecilia Sala touching down in Rome as a Milan court reviews the case of
00:13an Iranian engineer arrested recently in Italy and wanted in the United States.
00:22The Italian prime minister stating that this was the fruit of intense diplomatic negotiations.
00:31For more, let's cross to Tehran and correspondent Saeed Azimi.
00:36Saeed, it was a 29-year-old journalist who had a visa to work, who was arrested.
00:45Thus, there were questions as to why she was arrested and questions as to the conditions
00:50surrounding her release.
00:53The first question that you mentioned, Francois, about why she was arrested, it is still unanswered
00:58to us as well.
00:59The Iranian minister of culture released a statement shortly after the news of Cecilia's
01:05arrest was published that she was arrested on the charge of violating the Islamic Republic's
01:12laws.
01:13The statement did not clarify what laws she had violated.
01:17There was a video of her for Quora Media that she released, and she was not wearing her
01:21scarf and her hijab, and there were speculations that she was arrested because of publishing
01:27that video.
01:28But I actually met Cecilia Sala in Tehran on December 14, so she was fixing her hijab
01:36whenever it fell off.
01:38She was very cautious about that.
01:39I don't think that was the main reason she was arrested.
01:43As for the conditions for her release, these are not specified yet.
01:50So what we are hearing, there are speculations, both in Tehran and in Rome, that Iran have
01:57a diplomatic request, a political request from Italy, which is mainly surrounding the
02:05JCPOA revival negotiations.
02:08The Iranian deputy foreign minister is set to meet with French, British, and German political
02:15directors of the foreign ministries of these three countries in Geneva on Sunday.
02:21So the speculation in Tehran is that Cecilia Sala was freed so that the EU representative
02:27Enrique Mora wouldn't fixate on yet another humanitarian case in Tehran, because we already
02:34have the case of three French hostages in Tehran.
02:38Three French hostages in Tehran.
02:41And there were these questions over an Iranian engineer arrested recently.
02:48The U.S. wanted his extradition, and he's filed a motion for his imprisonment to be
02:54lightened to house arrest.
02:57Yes, but the house arrest has been declined, and there are speculations yet to be confirmed
03:06that Mohammad Abedini, the Iranian engineer arrested in Milan, will be freed soon, some
03:11say tomorrow, after President Biden visits Rome.
03:15Saeed Azimi, many thanks for that live update from Tehran, that it's the Iranian engineer
03:22accused by the United States of supplying drone technology that was used in an attack
03:28on U.S. forces in Jordan.
03:31Well, for more analysis, let's cross to Uppsala, Sweden.
03:34Roozbeh Parsi is the head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Swedish Institute
03:39of International Affairs.
03:42Roozbeh, more questions than answers, as you heard from our correspondent there, when it
03:46comes to the specific case of Cecilia Sala.
03:51But it does seem as though this is part of a wider game, what the French pointedly call
03:56hostage diplomacy on the part of Tehran.
03:59Well, this is always the suspicion, at least, when anyone, particularly Westerners, are
04:04imprisoned in Iran, since the judiciary in Iran is very not transparent and very inconsistent
04:12in what it claims, what it accuses people of, and what they imprison people for.
04:17In this specific case, what do you make of the timeline here?
04:21You have the Italian prime minister, who last weekend was in Mar-a-Lago.
04:27He's going to be welcoming Joe Biden soon on his last trip abroad as U.S. president.
04:35And then this announcement that surprised some.
04:39Well, yes, but I think it plays into the larger picture of everyone wondering what Trump is
04:46going to do once he becomes president.
04:49And so everyone is trying to prepare themselves and, to the extent possible, ingratiate themselves
04:54with him in order not to end up on the wrong side of the stick, as it were, once he goes
05:00into the White House again.
05:01Now, of course, for Iran, this is a particularly difficult moment, because for the last year
05:05they have lost a lot of their influence and perceived ability to deter attacks.
05:11And there's now talk, both in Israel and in Washington, D.C., of maybe Iran being on the
05:16ropes, one could finish them off once and for all.
05:20The maximalist sanctions that Donald Trump put back when he became president the first
05:27time, those have not gone away.
05:29And with a weakened Iran, what's his next move going to be when he becomes president again?
05:36Well, the problem here is, of course, that his appointments have been rather contradictory.
05:41So we have a lot of people who either claim or who will be appointed by him, and they
05:46have very different positions on Iran.
05:49Some of them are very hawkish, and they believe that this maximum pressure that he initiated
05:53when he was president last is working, supposedly.
05:56And there are those who don't want to get bogged down into yet another military confrontation
06:02in the Middle East, and therefore not interested in pursuing, if you want to call it, an Israeli
06:07line of keep pushing Iran.
06:09So at the moment, it's very difficult to see which side is going to get the upper hand
06:14and whether Trump himself is going to be personally involved, because, of course, for him, more
06:18than anything else, it's a question of whether he can make a deal, a deal that will be better
06:22than the nuclear agreement that Obama managed to get.
06:27And that could be one of the stepping stones towards getting a Nobel Peace Prize, which
06:30supposedly is something that he's very much coveting.
06:33Later in this hour, Roosevelt, we're going to be hearing from Philip Turrell about the
06:38press conference that's just happened with the visiting U.S. secretary of state here
06:42in Paris with his French counterpart, the two of them giving a long leash to Syria's
06:46new leaders one month after the fall of Assad, saying there's hope for Syria's future.
06:51You talk about Iran being on the ropes.
06:53Is there a scramble for the Middle East happening?
06:57Well, I think everyone understands now that a lot of the things that were taken for granted
07:03as being facts no longer are.
07:05They are all put in question.
07:07So now it's a question of who can create new facts on the ground.
07:11And of course, Israel here is in the driving seat more than anyone else, since they have
07:16created some of the new facts and they are using their military to the fullest extent
07:21in order to destroy their enemies.
07:23And the United States so far has not restrained them in any visible manner, at least.
07:28And so the question is whether Trump will let them continue doing this or whether when
07:33he comes in, he wants peace and quiet, which then either means that things will go more
07:37peaceful or that the Israelis will need to do whatever they need to do now before he
07:41comes into power.
07:43And getting back to this hostage situation, because we heard an interview this Wednesday
07:50morning with the Nobel Peace Laureate, Narges Mohamedi, speaking to French radio.
07:57She expressed a lot of concern from her house arrest for one of those three French hostages,
08:03Cecilia Coller.
08:05She's saying she's in bad shape in Evin prison.
08:09Any thoughts on what Emmanuel Macron can do at this juncture?
08:13Well, I think the Iranians are in general not particularly impressed or interested in
08:20Europe anymore.
08:21That, of course, doesn't mean that they don't recognize that Europe can still hurt them
08:25quite a lot.
08:26So I think at this point, it's whether the Europeans have a common position or whether
08:30the Iranians will try and deal with each member state, especially the big ones, and whether
08:36they think that releasing some of these prisoners might help them not to end up being put under
08:43more pressure by Europe.
08:45Europe has one main leverage at this point, and that is the snapback function of the nuclear
08:50agreement, which if they initiate it would return all UN sanctions on Iran.
08:56Now, Iran is already, in a sense, inundated by sanctions.
09:00So it's not that it's going to be a huge difference, but it will make everything else
09:05already difficult, much more difficult.
09:07So I think they would want to avoid that.
09:09And maybe, just maybe, this would be one of the avenues that can be pursued in order to
09:13avoid that, and also then result in the release of these prisoners.
09:18Roozbeh Parsi, many thanks for being with us from Uppsala, Sweden.