Iran has sentenced a 70-year-old Iranian American Jewish man from New York to prison — for visiting Israel more than a decade ago to celebrate his son’s bar mitzvah.

Kamran Hekmati, a jeweler and longtime resident of Great Neck, Long Island, was detained in May during what was meant to be a brief family visit to his birthplace. He has been imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison since July, family members said.

According to relatives, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court handed down a four-year sentence in late August, citing a law that bans Iranians from traveling to Israel. The sentence was later reduced to one year, but Mr. Hekmati remains behind bars.

“He went to Israel in 2012 to celebrate his son’s bar mitzvah — a family trip, nothing political,” said one family member, who asked not to be named for fear of government retaliation. “Now he’s being treated like a spy.”

Mr. Hekmati, who immigrated to the United States at age 13, traveled to Iran using his Iranian passport, as required by law. Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, allowing it to prosecute Americans of Iranian descent under domestic law while denying them consular access.

Rights advocates say Hekmati’s case marks the first known instance in recent years of Iran targeting a Jewish dual citizen for visiting Israel for personal reasons. It comes as Tehran continues to hold several Americans — including journalist Reza Valizadeh and two unnamed women — in what human-rights groups describe as a campaign of hostage diplomacy.

“The Iranian regime has a long history of unjustly detaining foreign nationals,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement, urging Iran to release Hekmati and others “immediately.”

Former Iranian American prisoner Siamak Namazi, freed last year in a U.S.–Iran prisoner swap, condemned the arrest. “By wrongfully detaining Mr. Hekmati and others like him, Tehran is once again fueling tensions with the United States and Israel,” Namazi said.

Hekmati’s relatives describe him as a devoted husband, father of four, and new grandfather who built a successful jewelry business in Manhattan’s Diamond District. “Kamran was the glue of the family,” said his cousin Shohreh Nowfar from California. “It’s so cruel that the country he loved so much — and kept returning to — has now imprisoned him.”

Hekmati had visited Iran multiple times without incident. But when he attempted to leave Tehran this May, security forces seized his passport, interrogated him for weeks, and demanded access to his phone and social-media accounts. In July, shortly after a U.S.-brokered cease-fire between Iran and Israel, agents raided his relative’s home and arrested him.

He was convicted without legal counsel, relatives said. Only after sentencing were they able to hire a lawyer, who has since filed an appeal that remains pending. The family hopes he will be released on humanitarian grounds: Hekmati is battling aggressive bladder cancer and, they say, is in deteriorating health.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has publicly encouraged expatriate Iranians — including members of religious minorities — to visit their homeland “without fear.” Yet Hekmati’s imprisonment has sent shockwaves through the Iranian diaspora, particularly among Iranian Jews who have long tried to maintain quiet cultural and family ties.

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