December 31, 2021
The Iranian Foreign Ministry says it will launch a program under which it can give guarantees that expatriates traveling to the country will not face detention or any other legal problem.
This sounds remarkably like a program the Rohani Administration announced in 2015.
Foreign Minister Hossain Amir-Abdollahian said November 21 that the ministry would soon launch an online service to enable expatriates to check their legal records before they travel to Iran.
“A new service will come online within a week that will help these individuals so they have no problem for entry and return,” Abdollahian was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA).
The announcement came more than a month after President Raisi said Iranians living abroad who want to engage in business and investment activities in Iran should not have any concern about their travel to the country.
Raisi said that his government would seek to facilitate the flow of investment into the country from Iranians living in other parts of the world. Iranian-Americans, however, are barred from investing in Iran by US sanctions.
Current Iranian laws do not recognize dual nationality, so expatriates arriving in Iran even those fully naturalized by another country, must enter Iran on an Iranian passport and are treated as Iranian citizens with no other nationality, thus forbidding foreign embassies from getting involved in cases if expatriates are arrested and charged.
Speaking to members of High Council of Iranian Affairs Abroad, Abdollahian recently called for the Majlis to approve new laws on how dual nationals should be treated. But he didn’t say what policy the Majlis should adopt.
According to PressTV, he said the issue had caused unwanted consequences for Iran, including what he described as Iranophobia campaigns affecting Iranian nationals living abroad.
Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese national who spent four years imprisoned in Iran after attending a conference to which he was invited by the government, told Iranian expats they should not be tricked by anything the foreign minister said.
In 2015, the Rohani Administration announced contact information it said expatriates could use to find out if there were any charges pending against them that would cause them to face arrest on arriving in Iran. It wasn’t known why Abdollahian didn’t just point to that contact information, but announced a whole new program aimed at expats.
In July 2015, an Iranian official said fewer than 1 percent of Iranian expatiates were subject to arrest and prosecution if they return home. However, 18 months earlier, the Foreign Ministry said about 5 percent of Iranian expatriates would be arrested for crimes upon their arrival at Iranian airports.
No one explained the discrepancy. In fact, the Rohani Administration didn’t seem to know there was a discrepancy. It is not, however, unusual for the government to issue conflicting statistics, as it appears severely challenged when it comes to numbers.
Neither announcement said how the conflicting percentages were calculated. But the percentages had to be considered very soft since the government doesn’t really know how many people have left Iran and now live abroad. Nobody does. Regrettably, the announcements both used percentages; neither gave the number of expatriates wanted by the Iranian government.