If you’re planning on visiting Iran, don’t. Even if you’re not American, no matter how friendly your government may be toward Iran and no matter how high a position you may occupy, you’re just a potential hostage.

And the standard procedure with reporters, diplomats or just random people is for their company, e.g. the Washington Post or the European Union to cover up your disappearance while they conduct more “diplomacy”.

Of course, that’s a problem when your diplomats are being taken hostage.

A Swedish citizen working for the European Union diplomatic corps has been imprisoned in Iran for more than 500 days, making him an important bargaining chip for Tehran as it tries to wring concessions from the West.

The arrest, which has been kept under wraps for over a year by the Swedish and European Union authorities, appears to be part of an expanding pattern of what has become known as Iran’s “hostage diplomacy.”

A hostage diplomacy that involves taking diplomats hostage.

So the real question is how soon can we get John Kerry on the next available flight to Tehran?

“Every time we had a diplomatic meeting at all levels, we have put the issue on the table. Relentlessly, we have been working for the freedom of Mr Floderus. And we will continue doing that,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell claimed. “We will not stop until Mr Floderus will be free.”

Borrell presumably was sitting at a table that wasn’t located in Iran.

Freeing Floderus either means applying serious pressure, a no-no, or trading hostages.

Iran announced in July last year that it had arrested a man on suspicion of espionage, two weeks after an Iranian citizen received a life jail term in Sweden for his role in the Iranian regime’s 1988 mass executions of thousands of opponents.

A Stockholm court found former Iranian prison chief Hamid Noury guilty of “aggravated crimes against international law” and “murder”.

So will Sweden pull a Biden and trade hostages? Probably. Especially when dealing with people this clueless.

“I was extremely scared, sad and worried. I still am. No one thought something like this could happen. It was a huge surprise,” European Commissioner Ylva Johansson said Tuesday.

No one could have seen this coming. What were the odds that a regime that diplomats hostage after seizing power… would go on taking diplomats hostage?

Especially when they’re not Americans.