Barry Rosen is an American former diplomat who was held hostage during the 1979–1981

Iran hostage crisis On November 4, 1979, 52 United States diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over ...

. Rosen was the press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran when it was seized by militants on November 4, 1979. He was held for 444 days, until the hostages' release on January 20, 1981. Regarding his hostage experience, Rosen said, "We were the first victims of modern state-sponsored terrorism." Along with other American hostages, he has been part of a lawsuit against the Iranian government, seeking justice for the suffering they endured. In his view, "Iranians need to know that you just can't do this in this world, abrogating international law, walking into an embassy, taking over people. They really didn’t learn a lesson from the hostage crisis." In January 2022, Rosen went on

hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...

, demanding that the 2015

Iran nuclear deal The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA; fa, برنامه جامع اقدام مشترک , barnāmeye jāme'e eqdāme moshtarak (, ''BARJAM'')), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal or Iran deal, is an agreement on the Iranian nuclear ...

not be revived without the release of foreign nationals being held in Iran. Rosen stopped his hunger strike after five days after US negotiators said that a deal without the release of the hostages was not likely.

References

{{US-diplomat-stub 20th-century American diplomats American people taken hostage Iran hostage crisis Living people Year of birth missing (living people)