Families and supporters of six Americans detained in Iran warned Friday that their loved ones face escalating danger from the intensifying military conflict, including the risk of becoming unintended casualties of Israeli and American airstrikes or victims of retaliation by Iranian authorities. At least two of the detainees are held at Evin Prison, the high-security Tehran facility that houses many of Iran’s political prisoners and that Israel’s military has warned nearby residents to evacuate amid continuing strikes.
The plight of the detainees — held on charges their families describe as fabricated, with at least one denied medical treatment for cancer — illustrates a human cost of the war that the Trump administration has acknowledged but declined to address in detail, citing the detainees’ safety.
“For Americans imprisoned in Iran, this is about as terrifying a moment as it gets,” said Siamak Namazi, an Iranian American who was detained for nearly eight years before being released as part of a deal with the U.S. in 2023. “What these families are facing now is days of war with no clear end in sight.”
Evin Prison in the line of fire
The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, a hostage advocacy organization, said the six Americans face “unprecedented danger” because of the military conflict. The U.S. government would not confirm the number of Americans held in Iran.
Ryan Fayhee, a lawyer for Reza Valizadeh, an Iranian American reporter detained at Evin, said he has pressed the urgency of the situation in regular talks with White House and State Department officials.
“It’s my job to let the administration and the Israeli government know that there are innocent American citizens within that prison,” Fayhee said. “They should take great care with this military action to avoid any unfortunate collateral damage.”
The families of other foreign nationals imprisoned at Evin have told European news outlets that airstrikes have been hitting close enough to the detention center to blow out windows.
The known cases
Kamran Hekmati, 61, a jewelry business owner from Long Island, spoke with his wife on Monday — a few days into the war — to assure her that he was safe, according to Shohreh Nowfar, his cousin. But the family worries about his condition because he has not been receiving regular treatments for his bladder cancer in the months since his detention began, she said.
“It’s an uncertain time in an uncertain country,” said Nowfar, a Los Angeles resident.
Iranian authorities stopped Hekmati at the airport in May, seized his passport, and prevented him from leaving the country. He was eventually charged under an Iranian law that makes it illegal to have visited Israel within the past 10 years. His family maintains that his last trip to Israel was some 13 years ago for his son’s Bar Mitzvah. They also dispute espionage-related charges alleging he met with agents of Israel’s intelligence service.
Kieran Ramsey, the chief investigative officer at Global Reach, a nonprofit working on Hekmati’s case, said the family had concerns early in the case about mistreatment. “He’s not only American, he’s also Jewish — and we had had some concerns early on in this case of him” getting bullied, said Ramsey, who previously led the U.S. government’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell.
Hekmati’s family believes he is the latest victim of Iran’s longstanding practice of detaining Americans in the hopes of securing the release of Iranians held in the U.S. or extracting other concessions from Washington. “They just wanted to have a hostage. An American hostage,” Nowfar said.
Valizadeh, 50, fled Iran in 2009 after reporting on the country’s pro-democracy protests. He obtained U.S. citizenship in 2022 while working in Washington for Radio Farda, the Persian-language arm of Radio Free Europe. He was detained in 2024 after returning to Iran to visit his elderly parents and was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges that he was collaborating with the U.S. government — charges his lawyer disputes. The U.S. has officially designated Valizadeh as wrongfully detained, a classification that moves his case under the supervision of the State Department’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. He is among at least 15 reporters currently jailed in Iran, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Afarin Mohajer, a California resident originally from Iran, was detained in September and charged with posting propaganda critical of Iran’s leadership on social media and insulting its Supreme Leader and Islam, according to her son, Reza Zarrabi, a political activist based in Germany. Zarrabi has told European media outlets that his mother is not politically active and that he believes she was arrested to silence his opposition to the government.
Administration calls for release
White House and State Department officials declined to respond to specific questions about the status of the detainees, citing concerns for their safety and security, but they called on Iran to release them.
“President Trump has been clear that he wants every American wrongfully detained to be returned home safe and sound, and that there will be dire consequences for regimes who treat Americans as political pawns,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson.
The State Department had designated Iran as a state sponsor of wrongful detention the day before the current conflict began — a move that imposes additional consequences on the government for its hostage-taking practices. Iran has for decades detained Americans as leverage to secure the release of Iranians held in the U.S. or to extract other concessions from Washington.
Echoes of past dangers at Evin
Namazi, who spent years inside Evin before his 2023 release, said he understood what the families were experiencing. He recalled a 2022 fire that killed at least eight inmates during his time at the facility.
“I remember the smoke, the confusion, and the total absence of reliable information,” said Namazi, 54, a Washington resident. “For us prisoners it was terrifying. My mother says that night was one of the hardest she endured.”