Fourth Iranian-American arrested in Iran

Namazi was arrested earlier this month while visiting a friend in Tehran, a family friend told the Post.

Siamak Namazi, an executive at Crescent Petroleum Co. and a prominent supporter of the US nuclear deal with Iran, was reportedly detained two weeks ago while visiting family in Tehran and is being held in Evin prison.

Namazi, well known among Iran policy experts, attended university in the United States and the United Kingdom and previously worked at think tanks and institutions in Washington, D.C. In 2007, he was chosen as a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum. He acted at one time as a liaison for businesses from the west that wanted to do business in Iran through a business he created in Iran and left back in 2009.

"The West must relax and rationalize the terms of its sanctions regime against Iran to allow more medical goods into the country", he wrote. Apparently, though, he fell out with the hard-liners in the Revolutionary Guard who have always been suspicious of him.

But Namazi's arrest was hardly an isolated incident, said Ghaemi, who added that he believed all worldwide workers were at risk.

Namazi's arrest was not commented on by the U.S. State Department directly, but did say they were aware of reports recently of a US citizen being arrested in Iran and were looking into those reports.

"NIAC is deeply troubled by unconfirmed reports that Siamak Namazi, an Iranian American residing in Dubai, has been detained by Iranian authorities", said NIAC.

Namazi's friends said Iranian security agents confiscated his Iranian passport and prevented him from leaving the country, the newspapers reported.

He returned to Iran after graduating from college, later becoming a USA citizen in 1993.

In July, the United States and other countries reached an agreement with Iran that would bar the country from building a nuclear weapon in exchange for lifting sanctions.

Word of Namazi's arrest has come as the political atmosphere in Iran is again taking a turn toward the same strident anti-Americanism that prevailed before the talks that led to the nuclear accord, which Iran negotiated with six world powers, including the United States.

Iranian hard-liners are opposed to moderate President Hassan Rouhani's strategy of trying to improve ties with the West. Internal domestic struggles over the direction of Iran appear to be intensifying ahead of February's parliamentary elections.

The Daily Beast reported that Namazi's email account might have been hacked after his arrest, with several of his American contacts reporting that they received suspicious "phishing" messages from his account.

An official at Crescent Petroleum, which is based near Dubai in the Emirati city of Sharjah, said he had no information and did not confirm Namazi's employment when reached by The Associated Press this week.

Washington Post report Jason Rezaian, who has reported from Tehran since 2008, was seized on July 22, 2014, in a raid on his home.

Other Americans held in Iran include former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, who holds dual Iranian and American citizenship and was arrested in August 2011. And Saeed Abedini, an Iranian-American Christian pastor, was sentenced to eight years in jail in 2013.