Iran on Sunday confirmed the detention of an Iranian American visiting the country, the latest in a string of arrests of dual nationals in the past year.

It was not immediately clear if officials were referring to the case of San Diego, California-based Robin Reza Shahini, who was detained while visiting his mother in the north-eastern city of Gorgan earlier in July, according to the Los Angeles Times and other western media.

Asked about reports of the arrest of a dual citizen on national security charges, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei told a weekly news conference: “The report on the arrest of an Iranian American dual national is correct.”

“But I don’t know what the charges are. The person was arrested in Gorgan … but the trial may be held in Tehran.”

Asked about Shahini during a news conference last week, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said he could not say anything “at this point in time”. A state department official said last week that the US had seen the reports of a possible detention of a US citizen, and was looking into it.

In the past nine months, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have arrested at least six dual-national Iranians, friends and family members say, the highest number of Iranians with dual nationality detained at one time in recent years to have been acknowledged.

The government has confirmed most of the detentions, without giving details of any charges. The Iranian government does not recognize dual nationality, which prevents relevant western embassies from seeing detainees.

In January, the US and Iran reached a historic prisoner swap deal that saw Iranians held or charged in the US, mostly for sanctions violations, released in return for Americans imprisoned in Iran.



Several Iranian dual nationals from the US, Britain, Canada and France are being kept behind bars on various charges, including espionage or collaborating with a hostile government. Some are kept to be used for a prisoner exchange with western countries, according to prisoners, their families and diplomats.

In March, the state department issued a warning noting that Iranian-Americans were particularly at risk of being detained or imprisoned if they travelled to Iran.

Shahini, who is in his mid-40s, graduated this spring from San Diego State University, where he studied international security and conflict resolution, said his friend and former classmate Jasmine Ljungberg. He is set to start a master’s program in homeland security at the university in the fall, she said.

Ljungberg was last in touch with Shahini via the WhatsApp messaging app on 9 July, when he messaged her to share some pictures of a visit to Iran’s mountainous countryside with his family. Ljungberg said she had been in touch with Shahini’s girlfriend and briefly with his sister since he was detained.

“Being a student, it was his dream,” Ljungberg said. “He has this passion and this drive to change things.”

Shahini came from a poor background, Ljungberg said, and worked a number of jobs after he moved to the US around 2000 or 2001, including owning a pizza shop and managing a car dealership, before becoming a full-time student.

He was active on social media, running two Facebook accounts, and maintained a blog, but the blog and one of his Facebook accounts appear to have been disabled, Ljungberg said. His WhatsApp account shows someone used the account as recently as Wednesday 20 July, she said.