Iran released Iranian American jeweler Kamran Hekmati from Tehran’s Evin prison on Sept. 5 after he served about half of a two-year sentence, but it has prohibited him from leaving the country, according to his family and U.S. officials. The State Department has called on Iran to lift the exit ban so the 62-year-old New Yorker can return to the United States.
Hekmati’s current location in Iran has not been disclosed by his family or the federal government. His cousin, Shohreh Nowfar, said Friday that the family was excited by his release and hoped his passport would soon be returned, allowing him to leave a country that has been at war with the United States and Israel for more than six months.
Hekmati owns a jewelry business in Manhattan’s Diamond District and has lived with his family for years in Great Neck Estates on Long Island. He is Iranian American and Jewish. Iranian authorities seized his passport in May 2025 as he tried to depart from Tehran’s airport, and they arrested him that July.
His family said Iranian authorities charged him under a law barring Iranian citizens from visiting Israel within the preceding 10 years. The family maintains that his last trip to Israel was 13 years ago, before the law was enacted, when he traveled there for his son’s bar mitzvah. U.S. Rep. Thomas Suozzi, a Long Island Democrat who pressed the State Department to designate Hekmati as wrongfully detained, said efforts must continue until Hekmati is reunited with his family.
The family has also raised concerns about Hekmati’s health, saying he needs regular medical examinations to monitor whether his bladder cancer has returned. It alleges that his detention followed Iran’s practice of holding Americans to seek political concessions from the United States. Kieran Ramsey, chief investigative officer at the U.S. nonprofit Global Reach, which is working on the case, said the organization hoped the release signaled an Iranian willingness to send Hekmati home. The State Department also called for the immediate release of Iranian American journalist Reza Valizadeh and other Americans it described as unjustly detained in Iran.