CNN | Jennifer Hansler
The family members of two Americans who were released into house arrest in Iran last week as part of a deal aimed at bringing them back home to the United States hit back at criticisms about the prospective agreement.

Der Spiegel | Marc Pitzke
Dozens of US citizens are currently being held in foreign prisons. Countries like Russia or Iran often use the hostages to pressure Washington. Their families feel abandoned by the government.

In a cruel twist of fate, today will be the 4th Valentine’s Day that I will step in to help my brother’s daughters celebrate the holiday that would otherwise be filled with their father’s pink cards, candies, and sweet sentiments. This Valentine’s Day marks 1,758 days that their father, Emad Shargi, will have been wrongfully detained as an American citizen in our birth country, Iran.

NPR
Neda Sharghi was in her car when she heard the news about Reed's release. Since 2018, Sharghi's older brother, Emad Shargi, has been detained in Iran, and like other members of Bring Our Families Home, she has been lobbying for a meeting with President Biden to discuss his case.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Iran on Saturday to release an American citizen he said has been held for years as a "political pawn," as the nations inch toward restoration of a nuclear deal.

The Washington Post
U.S. officials say efforts to free the Namazis, Shargi and Tahbaz will persist if the nuclear deal fizzles. As long as the two issues are separate yet related and U.S. parties remain polarized, the American captives — and their loved ones — will continue to suffer.

The Washington Post
If a loved one is being held hostage by an authoritarian regime, every phone call from overseas could be proof of life. That is the reality for the families of Americans Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz and Siamak and Baquer Namazi, who are being held in Iran as bargaining chips in broader talks with Washington about national security. So when Bahareh Shargi, Emad’s wife, didn’t get an expected call from Evin Prison recently, she was desperate to know why:

"It's hard not to feel guilty," Emad Shargi's younger daughter tells PEOPLE. "Meanwhile our father — the one who built this all for us and made this all possible — is in a cell and sleeping on the ground when he should be here with us"

The Washington Post
Emad Shargi, an American citizen born in Iran, hasn’t been allowed to leave the country in three years.

Later this month, Bahareh Shargi will mark an anniversary: It will be three years that her husband has been stuck in Iran.

Iranian authorities first imprisoned Emad Shargi, a U.S. citizen, on April 23, 2018. Though they eventually released him on bail, they did not allow him to leave the country and later returned him to Tehran's Evin prison. Now his family hopes that speaking out may help him.

An Iranian-American couple’s relocation to Iran after their daughters went off to college in the United States was a mistake paid for in accusations of spying, murky prosecution and prison.