Kamran Hekmati, a 70-year-old Jewish Iranian-American businessman and public official from Great Neck, New York, has been released on bail from Tehran’s Evin Prison, but remains in Iran under a travel ban that prevents him from returning home to his family on Long Island.

A source familiar with the matter tells Belaaz exclusively that Hekmati’s release came at the request of Qatar.

Belaaz has learned that in the lead-up to the release, there was quiet engagement involving Jewish communal figures and Qatari officials, part of a broader diplomatic effort that ultimately helped secure Hekmati’s bail.

Hekmati immigrated to the United States as a teenager more than 55 years ago and has been a U.S. citizen for decades. He traveled to Iran in May 2025 to visit aging family members, was arrested in Tehran that July, and was later sentenced by an Islamic Revolutionary Court to four years in prison.

Among the charges cited against him was a 2012 trip to Israel to attend his son’s Bar Mitzvah; Iranian prosecutors later added allegations that he had met with Mossad agents abroad.

Hekmati operates a jewelry business in Manhattan’s Diamond District and serves on the Village of Great Neck Estates Zoning Board of Appeals. He is also battling aggressive bladder cancer, making his continued confinement and his lack of access to his doctors in the United States, a pressing humanitarian concern.

In March 2026, the U.S. State Department designated Hekmati as “wrongfully detained” under the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act. Members of Congress, including Rep. Tom Suozzi and Rep. Claudia Tenney, have pressed the administration to secure his release on humanitarian grounds.

While Hekmati is now out of Evin Prison, he remains under an Iranian exit ban and cannot yet return to the United States. Diplomatic efforts are continuing to lift the travel restrictions and allow him to return home for medical treatment.