Jason Rezaian on Imprisonment in Iran

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episode: Jason Rezaian on Imprisonment in Iran
Host: David Remnick
Date: January 25, 2019

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Overview

This episode features a powerful conversation between David Remnick and Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post journalist who was detained in Iran for 544 days. Rezaian discusses his memoir "Prisoner," reflecting on his journey to journalism in Iran, the circumstances surrounding his arrest, the conditions of his imprisonment, the psychological struggles of solitary confinement, and the international context impacting his fate. The interview delves deeply into the personal, political, and existential ramifications of Rezaian’s ordeal, highlighting both the absurdity and brutality encountered, and offering insights into post-imprisonment life and ongoing U.S.-Iran relations.

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Jason Rezaian’s Path to Journalism in Iran

[00:37–04:19]

• Career Beginnings:
  • Rezaian relates his upbringing as the child of Iranian immigrants involved in the Persian rug trade in California, his temporary foray into running a rug shop, and his decision to move to Tehran during the 2008 financial crisis.
  • Memorable Quote:

    "I opened the doors... in May of 2008. And by October 2008, I thought to myself, I may never sell another rug because nobody's got any money in their pockets anymore." (01:42)

• Transition to Journalism:
  • He began freelancing in Iran at the time of President Ahmadinejad's contentious 2009 reelection, with one of his articles picked up by The New York Times, launching his full-time journalism career.
• Joining The Washington Post:
  • After three years freelancing, the Post sought Rezaian to head its Tehran bureau—a one-person operation at the time.
• Personal Note:
  • He met his wife, Yeganeh ("Yegi"), in Iran; she became a journalist herself and Bloomberg’s Tehran correspondent.

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Life as a Foreign Correspondent in Tehran

[05:02–07:25]

• Isolation and Surveillance:
  • Rezaian was the sole American journalist actively working in Tehran by 2014.
  • He describes assumptions of monitored apartments, phone calls, emails, and occasional in-person surveillance:

    "You assume that your apartment is probably bugged... What I didn't assume at the time... was that your emails are being monitored." (05:28)

• Political Climate:
  • Tense nuclear negotiations between Iran and global powers marked the period, with optimism for a diplomatic breakthrough.

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Arrest and the Shocking Turn of Events

[07:32–14:47]

• The Day of Arrest:
  • Rezaian and Yegi were preparing for a trip to the U.S. when a phishing email, account hacks, and a supposed extortion threat targeted them. That evening, plainclothes security officers stormed their apartment, ransacked it, and took both into custody.
  • Memorable Sequence:

    "The door opens and there's a man standing there with a gun pointing right at me in my face." (10:35)

• Interrogation Begins:
  • At Evin Prison, Rezaian was accused of leading the CIA station in Tehran, launching his ordeal.
  • Double Disadvantage of Dual Citizenship:

    "When you get arrested. It's a big disadvantage because... they don't acknowledge your citizenship, meaning that you're subject to Iranian laws. And this is... an Iranian internal matter." (15:04)

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The Prison Experience

[14:47–27:10]

• Solitary Confinement:
  • Rezaian spent 49 nights in solitary; Yegi, 72 nights.
  • Evin Prison described as notoriously brutal and divided among different factions of Iranian power.
• The Interrogator—Kazem:
  • Kazem, the main interrogator—a figure at once absurd and menacing—used a mix of psychological manipulation, threats, and surreal accusations:

    "Because you're the chief of the CIA station in Tehran. And that's when our nightmare really began." (14:12)

• Absurdity of Evidence:
  • Even an innocent avocado Kickstarter project was interpreted as espionage code:

    "You must tell me about the avocado. This is code. We know that. But for what?" (17:33)

• Conditions in Solitary:
  • An 8 by 4 cell, blanket on the floor, lights on 24/7, little food as punishment.
  • Quote:

    "They told me that... the great judge had decided I needed to lose some weight. And it worked?" (24:55)

• Psychological Toll:
  • The passage of time, relentless interrogations, oscillating threats, and isolation fueled alternating hope and despair.

    "Time is your worst enemy... you don't have anything to fill it with." (23:38)

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Shifting Dynamics, Trial, and Outside Support

[27:10–33:04]

• Visits and Communication:
  • Yegi’s visits provided covert updates about international pressure—using code names (“Uncle John” for John Kerry, “Jay Z” for Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif).
• Understanding His Captivity:
  • Rezaian eventually realized his detention was a pawn in Iran’s internal power struggle during negotiations.
• International Campaign:
  • The Washington Post and the journalistic community mounted persistent campaigns for his release.

    "Did you worry about getting forgotten?... 100%. I mean, it's still the thing when I have nightmares." (31:39)

• Reflections on the "Trial":
  • Rezaian refused to plead guilty, aware he had a greater responsibility to the truth and his supporters.

    "You're not going to come home as the guy that pled guilty in the Revolutionary Court, you're going to stand tall and you didn't do anything wrong." (32:31)

• Books in Prison:
  • He found more comfort in reading about political repression and suffering (Animal Farm, Gulag Archipelago) than “feel-good” titles.

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Release, Reflection, and Life After Prison

[35:21–43:47]

• Release and Aftermath:
  • Rezaian likens his imprisonment to being caught in a “geopolitical hurricane.”
  • He did not find writing about his experience cathartic but saw meaning in drawing a narrative from trauma:

    "I've just tried to be really honest about it...turn this crappy thing that happened to me into a story that I hope has meaning for the people that read it." (36:45)

• On Anger and Moving Forward:
  • While angry, he chooses to channel those feelings into constructive storytelling rather than bitterness.
• Politics and U.S.-Iran Relations:
  • He critiques the Trump administration’s lack of coherent Iran policy:

    "I think that they've basically thrown all of those notes in the fire and are shooting from the hip..." (39:13)

• On the Iranian Regime:
  • Rezaian is clear-eyed about the regime's unpopularity among Iranians and the limitations of theocratic government:

    "Theocracy's destiny was figured out a long time ago. It doesn't really have a place in the future of our world." (40:27)

• Adjusting to Freedom and Trauma:
  • He reflects candidly on continued psychological after-effects—confusion, irritability, nightmares—with self-awareness and acceptance.

    "I'm becoming more and more aware that there are workings of my brain that probably won't go back to what they were before all this. And I'm getting more comfortable with that." (43:30)

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Looking to the Future

[44:10–44:27]

• New Beginnings:
  • When asked what he hopes for the next chapter, Rezaian says:

    "I want for Yegi and me to continue working, continue writing, but to be known for the things that we do moving forward and not for the things that were done to us." (44:10)

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Notable Quotes

• On becoming a journalist in Iran:

  "So I opened my own rug shop ... And by October 2008, I thought to myself, I may never sell another rug because nobody's got any money in their pockets anymore." – Jason Rezaian (01:41)

• On his arrest:

  "The door opens and there's a man standing there with a gun pointing right at me in my face." – Jason Rezaian (10:35)

• On dual citizenship:

  "When you get arrested. It's a big disadvantage because... they don't acknowledge your citizenship, meaning that you're subject to Iranian laws." (15:04)

• On the absurd avocado accusations:

  "You must tell me about the avocado. This is code. We know that. But for what?" (17:33)

• On surviving trauma:

  "I want for Yegi and me to continue working, continue writing, but to be known for the things that we do moving forward and not for the things that were done to us." (44:10)

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Timeline of Key Segments

• Career & Move to Iran: 00:37–04:19
• Life as a Correspondent: 05:02–07:25
• Arrest Event: 07:32–14:47
• Prison Experience: 14:47–27:10
• Changing Dynamics, Trial, Books: 27:10–33:07
• Reflections & International Context: 35:21–44:10
• Looking Forward: 44:10–44:27

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Tone & Takeaways

The conversation is rich with irony, humor, resilience, and lucidity. Despite the gravity of his ordeal, Rezaian narrates with candor and warmth—finding meaning in suffering, exposing the absurdities of authoritarian paranoia, and emphasizing the healing power of truth-telling. His story stands as a testament to endurance and the ongoing fight for press freedom and human dignity, yet is never devoid of humanity and hope for the future.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

This is a special podcast bonus of the New Yorker Radio Hour. This week, David Remnick spoke with Jason Rezaian, the author of a new memoir called Prisoner. Rezaian was born in California to Iranian immigrant parents. He moved to Tehran as a reporter and was working for the Washington Post when he was arrested by Iranian authorities. Rezaian was held and interrogated for more than 500 days. Here's David Remnick talking with Rezaian at the New York Public Library.

[Interviewer]

So how did you maneuver your way journalistically and in terms of your career to get to go to Iran for the Washington Post? How did this all happen?

[Jason Rezaian]

I moved there without any job or any kind of clear sense of who I'd be writing for.

[Interviewer]

You upped your. You just lifted stakes, quit your job. Where were you before?

[Jason Rezaian]

So as those of you who are the children of immigrant entrepreneurs know, if your father was in a business, you end up in that business. So, you know, I.

[Interviewer]

And the family, what did they do for a living?

[Jason Rezaian]

The Persian rug trade. And I had a time in the trade, and I'm looking at this nice rug.

[Interviewer]

What do you think?

[Jason Rezaian]

It's all right.

[Interviewer]

It's okay.

[Jason Rezaian]

Special bet, special prize for you, my friend. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How much you think this rug would go for on the open market?

[Jason Rezaian]

On the open market?

[Interviewer]

Tony Mark says it's not for sale. Tony Marks is lying. Everything for sale.

[Jason Rezaian]

Every rug has a price. Yeah. So I opened my own rug shop.

[Interviewer]

Good. Good move.

[Jason Rezaian]

I see some people here tonight that have been in that rug shop before. In San Francisco. I had it for about a year. Exactly. I opened the doors, if you can believe it, in May of 2008. And by October 2008, I thought to myself, I may never sell another rug because nobody's got any money in their pockets anymore.

[Interviewer]

This is right in the midst of the financial crisis, right in the middle of that. And your move was to get on.

[Jason Rezaian]

An airplane and go to Tehran.

[Interviewer]

And go to Tehran seemed like the smartest thing. What better reaction to the financial crisis could there have been?

[Jason Rezaian]

Here we are now, you know, so.

[Interviewer]

And you had, you know, a few dollars in your pocket. You show up in Tehran, and how do you make a life for yourself?

[Jason Rezaian]

So I had freelance. I'd written freelance articles over the years. You know, when I visited Iran, I had a small body of work at that point. And this was at the. At the time of the reelection campaign of Ahmadinejad in 2009. Nobody was really predicting what a. A huge story that would evolve into. I was there on the ground filing for a couple of very small outlets. And one of my pieces that I wrote on the eve of that election got picked up by the Times, and I was never out of work again after that.

[Interviewer]

Why is it that at that point, the New York Times does not have bureaus in a place that you would think is every bit as of interest to an American reader as certainly Cairo or Jerusalem or.

[Jason Rezaian]

It was hard to get in. I mean, you know, they have a very long vetting process, and you have to get all sorts of letters from publishers and editors. And I think a lot of editors want to have a presence in Iran, but realize that there might be more hassle than it's worth.

[Interviewer]

So the Washington Post, you figured this out bureaucratically.

[Jason Rezaian]

Right. So the Post actually did have a bureau at that point. You know, when we talk about bureaus, you know, these are apartments. Right. A single person usually doing the job. So I'd been working as a freelancer in Iran for three years when the Post reached out to me and said, we need a new guy.

[Interviewer]

You're the guy. Yeah, you're the guy. Had you done the smartest thing you've ever done in your life and meet your. Your wife?

[Jason Rezaian]

We had met, but we hadn't married yet. I think we married almost a year to the day after I got the job with the Post.

[Interviewer]

And you were working together.

[Jason Rezaian]

We grew into a working relationship.

[Interviewer]

That's what marriage is all about.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah. We had been together for about six or eight months, and she studied English, had a master's degree in English translation, was working in a company like. Like so many young, smart Iranians were not getting paid enough and no real future. And I said, why don't you give journalism a crack? It's not the best job in America, but here, if you're somebody that's speaking English and have the ability to put sentences together and all of that, you could probably work for some foreign media. And that's how she got started. And ultimately she became Bloomberg's correspondent in Tehran.

[Interviewer]

So how many on the date that we're coming up on, meaning 2014, substantial working journalists from the United States are in Tehran?

[Jason Rezaian]

From the United States? Just me.

[Interviewer]

You made it kind of easy for them, didn't you?

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah, apparently. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So before we get to the obvious, I want to get us paint the picture of what it is to be a correspondent in Tehran as opposed to, say, Paris.

[Jason Rezaian]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Is your apartment bugged? Is that an understanding that you just operate under?

[Jason Rezaian]

You assume that your apartment is probably bugged. You assume that most of your phone calls are Being listened to. What I didn't assume at the time and I think it only became clear right at the end that your emails are being monitored but you're followed sometimes.

[Interviewer]

What was going on in the summer of 2014 that was in any way politically unusual?

[Jason Rezaian]

The nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers, they were in full swing and I was for the first time given the opportunity to cover the Iran story from multiple places. I was asked to go and cover a round of nuclear negotiations in Vienna. So. So literally a couple of days before we were arrested, I was in Vienna reporting.

[Interviewer]

But I would think that if with nuclear negotiations going on, extremely sensitive and optimism running high hot.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

That the last thing that Tehran would want to do would be to jeopardize that in any way. Were you known to have politics that in any way made them upset?

[Jason Rezaian]

I don't think it had anything to do with that. Literally the day that we were arrested, I went to the press ministry, it's, you know, they call it the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture and they have different offices, sort of Orwellian. Islamic. Orwellian name. Right. So I went there to pick up press credentials or press passes which had been extended for an entire year, which.

[Interviewer]

Is a sign that you were okay.

[Jason Rezaian]

Everything's fine. Yeah. So, you know, there was no sense that I had any sort of mark on my, on my back.

[Interviewer]

Okay. So 22nd of July dawns 2014. Tell us what happens.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yegi and I were preparing to come to the United States actually. We'd been married for about, for a summer vacation for a couple months. Yeah, we'd been here, we'd been married for 15 months. Her green card paperwork was ready. Right. We were about to embark on this bi continental life that I think a lot of people, a lot of journalists, a lot of foreign correspondents aspire to. It was right there within our reach. And I got a frantic call from her that, you know, something is amiss.

[Interviewer]

What time?

[Jason Rezaian]

About 3:30 in the afternoon. And I hightailed at home something was amiss.

[Interviewer]

Meaning what?

[Jason Rezaian]

She got an email basically saying that that somebody had compromising information about us and that they were going to expose it to the world and that they were demanding money. It was odd. It was a really strange sort of out of the blue occurrence. Click on this, you know, phishing scam sort of email we learned later. I made it home and I tried to calm her. She was.

[Interviewer]

And you had never gotten anything of the like before?

[Jason Rezaian]

No, no, not, not to my.

[Interviewer]

Nothing threatening.

[Jason Rezaian]

No visits, no threats, never and never.

[Interviewer]

Got Called in by the Foreign Ministry.

[Jason Rezaian]

What do you think? Called in to, you know, I've been called in to answer about articles that I've written that have my press credential, you know, suspended for a week or two at a time as other correspondence would routinely have happen as a reminder that we as a power structure are.

[Interviewer]

Here just to, just to remind you of their presence.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah, but nothing like this. We called a friend of ours because when I got home I realized that my Facebook and Twitter accounts had also been hacked into. The passwords were changed. Called a friend who did all of our IT stuff in our house and he came and said, you know, your accounts have all been compromised by servers that you know are housed in Russia actually. And let's, let's do whatever we can to bring your security level back up. We're going to create new passwords.

[Interviewer]

Were you pretty vigilant about that kind of thing?

[Jason Rezaian]

Not enough. Yeah, obviously not enough, Evidently. Yeah. And you know, I thought the worst was behind us and we were preparing, you know, it was, it was really going to be the last social event that we did before we went to the States to go to a surprise birthday party for my mother in law. We were, you know, dressed up, getting ready to go. I told Yegi, you know, we're going to be fine. Don't worry about this. We'll be in America.

[Interviewer]

This is now toward the evening, it's.

[Jason Rezaian]

About 7:30, 8:00 clock at night. We call a taxi to come pick us up at our high rise apartment. Get a notification from the doorman that the car is there. We go down the elevator to go and get in the car and the door opens and there's a man standing there with a gun pointing right at me in my face.

[Interviewer]

Uniform?

[Jason Rezaian]

No, plain clothes. Gray suits, we call them in Iran. Right.

[Interviewer]

Which means what?

[Jason Rezaian]

Plain clothes. Security officer. Right. They pried their way into the elevator. It was a very frantic scene. You know, they're waving guns around, there's three or four of them and they say we're going back up to the apartment. Take us back upstairs. Separate. Yegi and I ransack the apartment looking for I don't know what. We have a safe in the house. Force us to open it, you know, take all of our passports, our documents, our money, her jewelry, our marriage certificate. You're cutting open tea bags. I mean, just an incredible scene. And you know, this goes on for an hour and a half.

[Interviewer]

How are you feeling during this? How is Yeriki feeling?

[Jason Rezaian]

Confused. Scared. Scared. But in my mind I'm Thinking to myself, this is a mistake, you know, this is going to blow over.

[Interviewer]

Had this happened to anyone else in town, any other correspondent, any other diplomat that you knew?

[Jason Rezaian]

Not in a way that it happened to us that anybody ever told us about. Yeah, I know of others who'd been harassed, who'd come home to their apartments ransacked, who came home to arrest warrants pinned to their door. But those were warnings that meant to leave town. This was something else. And they hauled us out of our apartment after about an hour and a half, put us in the back of a van, blindfolded us, handcuffed me, and took us to prison.

[Interviewer]

And they took you to Evin Prison?

[Jason Rezaian]

They took us to Evan Prison.

[Interviewer]

For those who don't know what that means, tell us.

[Jason Rezaian]

So Evin Prison is, you know, considered one of the most notorious prisons for political prisoners probably in the world. It has multiple sections, it's a vast complex that's existed for decades. And different parts of the Iranian power structure have their own sections of the prison. So the intelligence ministry has a section, the police department, the judiciary, everybody's got their own wings. And, you know, there's wings for financial crimes, political crimes.

[Interviewer]

Had you ever been in there before?

[Jason Rezaian]

Never, never. It's not the sort of place that, you know, you're allowed to report from. And the section that we ended up in was the section that belongs to the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. And it's really the only way.

[Interviewer]

And you knew that right away?

[Jason Rezaian]

I did not know that until.

[Interviewer]

So they're leading both of you in blindfolded.

[Jason Rezaian]

Blindfolded. Separated. I mean, they take us to separate rooms.

[Interviewer]

And saying what to you? As you're shuffling along the hallway, not really saying anything.

[Jason Rezaian]

Take me into a big room where there's obviously lots of people in the room. And very quickly a voice starts talking to me. You know why you're here? No, I don't know why I'm here. Because you're the chief of the CIA station in Tehran. And that's when our nightmare really began. I tried to correct that record very quickly and it was a no win battle.

[Interviewer]

Now, just for the record, we don't have an embassy there.

[Jason Rezaian]

There's no embassy.

[Interviewer]

So there would be no.

[Jason Rezaian]

There would be no consular service. The Swiss are our protecting power there. But as a citizen of both the United States and of Iran, which I.

[Interviewer]

Am, it's an advantage, or a disadvantage.

[Jason Rezaian]

When you get arrested. It's a big disadvantage because. Because they don't acknowledge your citizenship, meaning that you're subject to Iranian laws. And this is an Iranian internal matter. It has nothing to do with you, America, but out.

[Interviewer]

And what's running through your mind initially is what seems to be what runs through political prisoners minds always in the beginning. This is a big mistake.

[Jason Rezaian]

We're going to get through this. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

By tomorrow morning, everything will be fine.

[Jason Rezaian]

It'll blow over. Somebody's gonna talk some sense into these guys.

[Interviewer]

Who's there to speak up for Jason and Yegi?

[Jason Rezaian]

Absolutely nobody.

[Interviewer]

You know, I mean, who knew?

[Jason Rezaian]

I think you don't get a phone call. No, there was no phone call. I think within several hours, you know, obviously we didn't show up to the party that we were supposed to go to. Yegi's parents probably feared the worst. They made it to our apartment at some point, saw that, you know, the destruction of the place. And I don't know how many days it was before she was able to reach out and call them.

[Interviewer]

How long was Yegi kept in jail?

[Jason Rezaian]

72 nights. All of them in solitary confinement.

[Interviewer]

72 nights in solitary. She was.

[Jason Rezaian]

She was. And you initially, 49 nights in solitary, and then the rest of the time with two other prisoners as well. One of them was an Iranian Kurdish businessman who is sadly still in prison, and the other was from the Republic of Azerbaijan. He and I spent 13 months together, and he's now back home with his family.

[Interviewer]

One of the great extended narratives of this book is your interrogations with and relationship with a guy named Kazem. Am I pronouncing it correctly?

[Jason Rezaian]

That's correct.

[Interviewer]

When does he enter the picture?

[Jason Rezaian]

I think it was about day three, after I've been taken to solitary and have spent a couple of days trying to figure out what's going on.

[Interviewer]

I want people to get a taste of this book. And also your description of your first encounter with your interrogator is so vividly drawn that I'd rather you read it rather than me tease it out of you secondhand. You could do a page or two, whatever you feel comfortable with.

[Jason Rezaian]

The first time I met him, I could only hear his voice. I was blindfolded, which was the rule whenever I was not in my cell. He spoke better English than I expected anyone there would and had a deep, breathy voice which immediately reminded me and always will of Wanda, the gender bending character Jamie Foxx played on In Living Color, which consisted primarily of him wearing a blonde wig and lipstick, who was constantly threatening to rock your world. In our initial encounter, before all the questions began, he claimed that he was chosen by the judiciary to defend me. I am your attorney, chosen by the great judge, he said. I couldn't see him, but that was obviously a lie. If you're my attorney, why am I blindfolded? It is for your protection. What does that mean? The charges against you are very serious and you must tell me everything if you want to leave this place. What charges? Spionage, he said. You are an espy. We know that you will leave as soon as you like. Everything is up to you. I would like to leave now. He was not actually my lawyer, he explained, but rather my interrogator, or as he referred to himself, my expert. You must tell me about the avocado. This is code. We know that. But for what? If this is really about a Kickstarter project, these guys are dumber or more paranoid and have fewer, fewer real security problems than I ever thought possible. I'm sorry for saying so, but you're making a big mistake, I told him. No, he said, slamming something against the wall close behind my head. My shoulders tensed and they never really loosened. We know it, and it will be much better for you if you tell us yourself than if we discover it. From his voice I assumed Kazam was a big guy, powerful. In time he would go on to become the perpetual good cop in group interrogations. But that voice, it made him sound so intimidating. We must execute you, Jason. You don't give us any choice. We prefer to let you live, but you refuse to cooperate. On the fourth day, though, in another dead end interrogation, fear and desperation mounting, I had a flash of inspiration. Something about our initial rapport made me think he might be responsive to affection, so I gave it a shot. Actually, I said, right now you're my only friend in the world. I'm your friend? He asked. Really? Yeah. There was a long pause. I had no idea what was coming. Take off your blindfold and turn around. I did what I was told to do cautiously and faced him for the first time. It was just the two of us in a sparse room. There were two plastic chairs and a single table against the wall I had been facing. He quickly rearranged the furniture so that we sat across from each other. Friends must be able to sit and talk comfortably, he said, but I wasn't convinced. He was slim, wore square steel framed glasses. His hairline was receding and he had the three day stubble that is common among those who would have you believe they are believers. He was probably in his early 30s, very typical working class Iranian. My nemesis was hardly the goon I had been imagining. The initial Interrogation sessions were awkward in part because I didn't know the rules yet, the main one being that I didn't have the right to ask any questions. A concept I would be reminded of every time I asked anything, whether it was about my case or if I could use the toilet. Despite Kazam's constant assurances that he was little more than a lowly cop doing his job and by no means a top banana, he actually said that in English often. I became convinced that was he. He was indeed all powerful, that it was he calling the shots.

[Interviewer]

Well done.

[Jason Rezaian]

Well done.

[Interviewer]

Thank you. Explain the avocado reference, please.

[Jason Rezaian]

So I put together a Kickstarter project, you know, the crowdfunding platform, several years earlier, with the intended purpose of trying to figure out why there's no avocados in Iran and hopefully starting a very small avocado farm. You can grow anything in Iran. Literally. Literally, you can grow whatever you want. And this was one blind spot in their agricultural industry. And I wanted to know if it had anything to do with sanctions or Great Satan stuff or whatever.

[Interviewer]

And your interrogators came to see this as a code word, avocado.

[Jason Rezaian]

This was a code for something so nefarious that they couldn't figure it out. And as time went on, they, you know, they kind of throttled it back a little bit. But anytime they would be pressing about another line of questioning, they would say, we gave you an easy time on the avocado thing, so you're going to have to make up for it on this one, you know, and whether you're.

[Interviewer]

Reading Darkness at Noon or Jacobo Timmerman or all kinds of prison memoirs, there's a similar pattern. The it's all going to be okay in the morning part of the thinking. And then cycles of thought of optimism, despair, suicidal ideation, as they say, all come through because time starts to play tricks on you. You have nothing to do but think. Describe that process the best you can.

[Jason Rezaian]

I mean, time is your worst enemy. When you're, especially in solitary confinement, you don't have anything to fill it with.

[Interviewer]

So solitary confinement is an eight by four cell.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

With a hole.

[Jason Rezaian]

You know, there was a hole behind a kind of a aluminum door. You know, a little privacy for myself.

[Interviewer]

A little discretion.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And something to sit on or lay on. Nothing?

[Jason Rezaian]

No.

[Interviewer]

So you're sleeping on the floor.

[Jason Rezaian]

I had a blanket and lights are on 24 hours a day. There's a couple of windows high up near the ceiling. The ceiling was about 10ft high. There's bars on the windows. I could see, you know, more or less if it was night or day. Right. And the big door that you imagined that's, you know, very heavy and makes a lot of noise, that doesn't open as often as you'd like, has two holes in it, one at face level where they can march, you know, they can make orders at you, and one down by the ground where they put food in.

[Interviewer]

And you're getting fed how many times a day?

[Jason Rezaian]

I was getting fed very sparsely. They told me that, that the great judge had decided I needed to lose some weight. And it worked?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. And what is interrupting your days?

[Jason Rezaian]

Interrogation, how often in those first weeks? It was, you know, multiple times a day, two, three times a day I can remember.

[Interviewer]

Was it threatening? Was it farsightful at times?

[Jason Rezaian]

It was all of the above. I mean, you know, one day it was, if you don't tell us this right now, we're cutting off your right hand. You're never going to see your wife again. You don't want to know what we might do to your wife. You know, you need to be executed by beheading because you're a traitor. I said to myself, are they presenting.

[Interviewer]

Evidence in front of you?

[Jason Rezaian]

They're presenting printouts of my emails and, you know, some of the most innocuous things that you can imagine. There's a line in the book where they present an email where I apologize to a friend of mine for going radio silent for a couple of days. And he came back and said, this is ESPY language.

[Interviewer]

ESPY language.

[Jason Rezaian]

Only espies talk like this.

[Interviewer]

When at a certain point they have not cut your hand off. No, they've not killed you. You have ailments as a result of the. The cold and the heat and the. And you're. You're not feeling all that great, for sure. But at a certain point, did the psychology change into a better place? In other words, maybe they're just keeping me in here for a political reason, I think, and if they were going to kill me, they would have killed me already.

[Jason Rezaian]

Once I came out of solitary, that wall of deception and misinformation really started to crumble.

[Interviewer]

Did your relationship with your interrogator change?

[Jason Rezaian]

I mean, it evolved so many different times. And, you know, I think later in the process, I felt like I had the upper hand sometimes.

[Interviewer]

Toward what end?

[Jason Rezaian]

Well, I mean, I think as time went on and I realized that there was a big push out in the world to bring me home, that I had value.

[Interviewer]

How did you know that?

[Jason Rezaian]

I knew it first and foremost in my visits with Yegi, when she was able to come and after she'd been released and could tell me, give me reports about things that were happening.

[Interviewer]

Were those meetings with Yegi monitored how long?

[Jason Rezaian]

100%. Yeah, I mean, you know, in the beginning it was just a few minutes, very rarely. But you know, thanks to her diligence in going to the court and demanding her own rights as the spouse, you know, they became institutionalized. So we'd see each other once a week and there would be for how long? An hour.

[Interviewer]

So a lot of information could pass between you. Were there things that Yegi did not tell you or figured it was best not to tell you because it would be dangerous?

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah, no, she told me everything, but in coded ways. Yeah, I mean, so she'd say, you.

[Interviewer]

Know, John Kerry said this, or President Obama said this.

[Jason Rezaian]

We had code names for different people.

[Interviewer]

What were the code names for those people?

[Jason Rezaian]

John Kerry was Uncle John Javad Zarif, the foreign minister of Iran was Jay Z. Makes sense, right?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jason Rezaian]

What's that? Yeah, yeah, there was, you know, there's the head of the Iranian Human Rights Commission, if there is such a thing. Right. Is a guy named Mohammad Javad Larajani. And his brother, he's been around, he speaks English, his mother, one of his brothers ran the judiciary for a long time. The other one's a Speaker of Parliament and this one runs the High Commission on Human Rights and he had studied at Berkeley. So we called him that dirty hippie. Sorry, Berkeley grads, I'm from that part of the world. But we had to stick with our codes.

[Interviewer]

What understanding did you come to have of why yourself was sitting in this in Evin prison now for well in excess of a year?

[Jason Rezaian]

I think we got closer to the culmination of the nuclear negotiations. It became really apparent that my fate was tied up with those negotiations and that the people that were holding me really didn't want to see the negotiations succeed.

[Interviewer]

So this was the so called conservatives.

[Jason Rezaian]

I mean, I wouldn't call them that. I mean, they're the people, they're the groups that want to be, you know, engaged with the rest of the world politically and economically. And there's those that don't and those that don't. Had me well explain that.

[Interviewer]

In other words, how do those that don't have the power to keep an American high level prisoner when those who want to be more engaged with the world are in power?

[Jason Rezaian]

I think it's really complicated. Obviously there's a supreme leader at the top. So it's almost as though, you know, you have a system where there's elections and, you know, Congress and Donald Trump and all that, and then the Pope gets to decide on everything at the end. Right. That's sort of the way it is there. But the irgc, which is, you know, closely aligned with the Revenue Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is closely aligned with the Supreme Leader, is, you know, the side of the system that wants to keep it shut off from the world. So I think initially my arrest was an internal power play. Right. Let's do what we can to kind of cut the legs out from under Rouhani and his team, who are in the midst of these negotiations.

[Interviewer]

Rouhani, the President. The president and who was considered a, quote, unquote, liberal in this sphere.

[Jason Rezaian]

And, you know, true to form, he and his team didn't play ball with that. They weren't going to get behind releasing me. And I think. I think they paid a price for it because it became a subject of the negotiations.

[Interviewer]

And the press was relentless in covering.

[Jason Rezaian]

Relentless. You know, the Post was incredible. Everybody else at other news organizations, you know, followed suit. My family was tireless, tireless. You know, my brother did hundreds of interviews and media hits. And, you know, I was telling Yegi every chance I got, tell anybody that, you know, that knows me to, you know, write or say whatever they want.

[Interviewer]

Did you worry about getting forgotten that?

[Jason Rezaian]

100%. I mean, it's still the thing when I have nightmares. It's nightmares about, you know, I was supposed to be released and I didn't get released. It's a recurring theme in my life.

[Interviewer]

You have them to this day, not.

[Jason Rezaian]

As often as I did a year or two ago, but from time to time.

[Interviewer]

At a certain point, there's a trial. Why? And what purpose does the trial serve and how did it go?

[Jason Rezaian]

So I think you have to ask different people how it went. I thought it went pretty good. I held my own and they took me to trial. Oftentimes what happens in these trials in Iran is that they bring a foreign person to court and compel them to plead guilty and promise that they'll be released within a matter of days. And that's happened like that sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't happen like that. And I had, you know, a force behind me and my wife who said, you know what? You're probably going to come home someday, and you're not going to come home as the guy that pled guilty in the Revolutionary Court, you're going to stand tall and you didn't do anything wrong. We didn't do anything wrong.

[Interviewer]

Did you consider pleading guilty?

[Jason Rezaian]

I thought about it a lot. They were in my ear telling me it was the right thing to do and that it would end this whole ordeal. And I didn't have any. I didn't have any really good option.

[Interviewer]

Could Yegi bring you books? Were there books to read?

[Jason Rezaian]

There were. I owe you a piece about that.

[Interviewer]

You're damn right you do.

[Jason Rezaian]

I've been talking about this for three years.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about some of the things you read and what gave you strength or solace or something that you could learn from.

[Jason Rezaian]

I mean, I think that without killing our piece.

[Interviewer]

No, we were among friends.

[Jason Rezaian]

One of the things that. That I learned pretty quickly was, you know, she brought me all these books that were sort of like feel good books, you know, Paulo Coelho and Power of now and all this sort of stuff, because she wanted to boost my spirits. And I think that that was the right. The right thought, but it wasn't working. What I wanted were books about injustice and torment and this sort of thing.

[Interviewer]

You wanted books about torment while you were in prison?

[Jason Rezaian]

100%.

[Interviewer]

Why?

[Jason Rezaian]

Because I knew that I was a very minor character in a real long continuum of this kind of political repression that's existed for centuries.

[Interviewer]

So what were some of the books that were in that mode that I.

[Jason Rezaian]

Think the ones that stick out the most as the most valuable? Animal Farm. Because people talk about Iran as very, very Orwellian. Iran is Orwellian in the Animal Farm sense, not in the 1984 sense. And Gulag Archipelago. I mean, the judge in my trial is.

[Interviewer]

I don't mean to make light of this, but the idea of reading Gulag Archipelago in a political prison with two little windows in the top. Again, I'm not joking around. That is not necessarily intuitive.

[Jason Rezaian]

So you read it. And when you're sitting there, having experienced this sort of situation, unless you figured.

[Interviewer]

That, like Solzhenitsyn, you would then win the Nobel Prize. And I thought, the Nobel Prize.

[Jason Rezaian]

No, but you would look at these characters and say, I know that guy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And that gave you some strength.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So when you look back at this experience, you were released, you celebrated, just Jeff Bezos comes and takes you home.

[Jason Rezaian]

Uncle Jeff. We call him Uncle Jeff. We do.

[Interviewer]

How do you make sense of this? In the same way that people in their lives. Something happens in their lives, God forbid, they lose a child or something horrible enters their lives, and they ask this question, the question being, why me? And you try to make sense of what seems to be utterly. What you described for the last hour is senseless in so many ways. How do you understand it politically, and how do you understand it in your own life?

[Jason Rezaian]

I mean, I think politically, I got stuck in the middle of this geopolitical hurricane. That's what landed me in prison. And, you know, when the dust settled, that's when I got out. Right. So there's that. But, you know, the ensuing year and a half, that was stolen from me. It's a pretty hard thing to reconcile.

[Interviewer]

Are you angry about it?

[Jason Rezaian]

I am, but I've decided that that doesn't really, as a person. I mean, some people are fueled by their anger. Right. Or fueled by their passions.

[Interviewer]

This is not an angry book.

[Jason Rezaian]

I'm not an angry person. So it's not that I've tried to suppress that. I've just tried to be really honest about it. I mean, I tell stories for a living, and I figured the best thing I can do here is turn this crappy thing that happened to me into a story that I hope has meaning for the people that read it. And it's had meaning for me to write it in the sense that people ask me if it was cathartic. No, it's not cathartic to relive a year and a half in prison. What it is is, you know, it's a special element of our work, our craft, that, you know, sometimes you process a series of events that happen to somebody and turn it into a narrative, turn it into a story, draw meaning out of it. In this case, I got to do that with something that happened to me. And so now it's, I hope, more than anything, a story that I can tell, and that will mean something to me and other people. And that's how. How I sort of accept the fact that this happened to us.

[Interviewer]

Something strange happened to you. In addition to it, to this. You went into jail, you went into Evan. Prison, and Barack Obama was president. Yeah, he's. I don't know if you've noticed. He's not anymore. We have an Iran policy, and we have an Iran obsession now. It seemed very much part of the Obama presidency was trying to juggle the Saudi imperative and the Iranian imperative, that Obama, more than any president before him, saw the Saudis a lot clearer. Not that he was saying that all was well in Tehran, but he would never quite put it in these terms, but he was trying to find a balance of power between these 2%. Something else has happened since that. The Trump administration is infinitely tougher on Iran. I'm not making any excuses for Iran. But, you know, Khashoggi is murdered in a. In Turkey, and the President of the United States doesn't seem to find this particularly horrible. What has happened and how do you assess the Trump administration's treatment of Tehran?

[Jason Rezaian]

Look, I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head. I think that they've put all of their attention on focusing on trying to destroy the Iran threat. How they plan to do that, I don't see any clear signs of. And I think that one thing that I've thought about a lot recently is, okay, this is a very different administration than the Obama administration, but at a minimum, use the collected works and information that the Obama folks were able to glean about Iranians, because, you know, their period of dialogue and negotiation with them was really the only contact we've had with them for, you know, in the last 30 years. Right. 39 years almost. And I think that they've basically thrown all of those notes in the fire and are shooting from the hip. And when I hear these guys talking about Iran, I realize, okay, they have a, you know, a deep desire to, you know, overthrow the regime in Iran, but they have no idea what the heck they're talking about.

[Interviewer]

What do you think is the destiny of the regime in Iran independent of the United States?

[Jason Rezaian]

I mean, I think theocracy's destiny was figured out a long time ago. It doesn't really have a place in the future of our world. And I think that the Iranian.

[Interviewer]

Is it a popular regime?

[Jason Rezaian]

No.

[Interviewer]

How can you assess that? How do we know?

[Jason Rezaian]

It's difficult to assess, other than the fact that there are tens of thousands of people, people that have routinely protested it and increasingly so over the last 20 years. You know, if you look at the activity of Iranians online, you know, on social media, on Instagram, Twitter, all these places, you know, they make themselves known, and they are making it clear that they don't want to be guided by, you know, ancient Islamic principles anymore. They want to be a country that's part of the modern world just like anybody else. They don't want to be banned from coming to America. Right. They want nothing more than to engage with us in terms of their ability to travel here, their ability to study here, do business here. So I think our policy, on the one hand, is supposedly anti Iranian regime, but ultimately stifling the Iranian people even more than they're already stifled, which doesn't seem very right headed to me.

[Interviewer]

You live in Washington now.

[Jason Rezaian]

I do.

[Interviewer]

And you have a new life. What were the first months, the first year like in freedom, after the initial euphoria.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah, it's hard. It's really hard. I mean, I think unless you've had choice stolen from you, you don't know how much a burden it can be. In those initial days, I mean, everything is so confusing. Do I go left? Do I go right? Do I want to eat this? Do I want to eat that? This person wants me to, you know, attend an event. Can I say no to people? What's okay. Right. And I think I was wise, in retrospect, to take a big step back and not commit to much.

[Interviewer]

People might speak too casually of the phenomenon, Notice. So post traumatic stress.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Did you suffer from it?

[Jason Rezaian]

You know, I don't. You know, I don't like terms, right. But I have a lot of symptoms that I never had before. And when I talk to people, talk to professionals, they say, well, that's, you know, a product of your. Your trauma. I mean, the nightmares that I talk about, but also, you know, the. The confusion in busy places, the kind of sensitivity to light and sound that I never had before. Irritability, you know, people. I think there was a few people out there that know me from, you know, my youth. I've never been an irritable person before. Maybe that's just getting a little bit older.

[Interviewer]

Stay tuned for news, my friend.

[Jason Rezaian]

Yeah, we're all. We're all post traumatic strange.

[Interviewer]

Does it recede with time?

[Jason Rezaian]

A lot of it does. But I think I'm becoming more and more aware that there are workings of my brain that probably won't go back to what they were before all this. And I'm getting more comfortable with that.

[Interviewer]

Jason, you've written a book and a wonderful book, and now it's done, and now it's out in the world, and it'll do what it does, what books do, and people will read it, and they'll read it 25 years from now and 50 years from now, but that part is done. What do you want to see your life be now that this chapter, in some ways, is closed?

[Jason Rezaian]

I want for Yegi and me to continue working, continue writing, but to be known for the things that we do moving forward and not for the things that were done to us.

[Interviewer]

Jason, thank you so much.

[David Remnick]

That was Jason Rezaian in conversation with David Remnick at the New York Public Library. It was recorded at Live from nypl, the New York Public Library's premier cultural series. Rezaian's new book is called My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.