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Iran frees Jewish Iranian-American jailed for visiting Israel to attend son’s bar mitzvah, but bars him from leaving country

A Jewish Iranian American jeweler from New York has been released from prison in Iran, but he is prohibited from leaving the country, according to his family and federal officials.

Kamran Hekmati was let out of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on September 5 after completing about half of a two-year sentence, his family writes on a website advocating for his release.

The family says they are also “desperately afraid for his health and well-being” as he requires regular medical checkups to ensure his bladder cancer doesn’t relapse.

“The Iranian regime couldn’t care less,” the family writes of Hekmati’s medical challenges. “Much like other wrongful detention cases in Iran, Kamran appears to be caught up in Iran’s traditional approach of detaining Americans to obtain political concessions from the US.”

Representatives for the family and the federal government don’t say where Hekmati, who turned 62 in August, is currently staying in Iran.

But Shohreh Nowfar, Hekmati’s cousin in California, says that the family is “excited” and hopeful that his passport can be returned soon so he can leave the country, which has been at war with the US and Israel for more than six months now.

“We continue to hope this is a signal from the Iranian side as to their willingness to send Kamran home,” adds Kieran Ramsey, chief investigative officer at Global Reach, a US nonprofit working on Hekmati’s case.

The Iranian American owns a jewelry business in Manhattan’s Diamond District and has lived with his family for years in Great Neck Estates, on suburban Long Island.

He was arrested by Iranian authorities last July after having his passport seized while trying to fly out of the airport in Tehran that May.

Hekmati’s family says he was charged under an Iranian law that bans Iranian citizens from visiting Israel within the last 10 years. But they maintain his last trip to Israel was 13 years ago — prior to the passage of the law — for his son’s bar mitzvah.

“Mr. Hekmati did nothing wrong,” says US Representative Thomas Suozzi, a Long Island Democrat who advocated for the State Department to officially designate Hekmati as wrongfully detained earlier this year. “We cannot rest until he is reunited with his family.”

The State Department similarly calls on Iran to lift its so-called exit ban so Hekmati can return to the US. It also says the country should “immediately release” Iranian American journalist Reza Valizadeh and other Americans “unjustly detained in Iran.”

Valizadeh and Hekmati are the two Americans so far officially designated as wrongfully detained in Iran, while up to eight others who have not been publicly named are prohibited from leaving the country, according to Ramsey.