Former U.S. hostage in Iran appointed as State Deparment senior advisor on Iran

U.S. special representative for Iran, Brian Hook stands with Xiyue Wang in Zurich, Switzerland. AP

Xiyue Wang, who endured over three years of captivity in Tehran on spy charges, has been appointed by the US State Department as a senior advisor focusing on Iran.

Wang, a vocal critic of the nuclear talks with Iran, has recently become a member of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

Wang spent a total of 1,216 days incarcerated in Evin Prison in Tehran and was freed in 2019 as part of a deal involving an Iranian scientist who had been found guilty in the United States for breaching sanctions.

As a graduate student from Princeton, he visited Iran with authorization from the Iranian foreign ministry, but was later detained and jailed on accusations of espionage.

In a lawsuit filed in 2021, Wang claimed that Princeton University did not provide him with adequate support while he was detained and that they coerced his family into silence. “They sent me to Iran and left me there,” Wang said at the time.