Musk said to have intervened in Italian prisoner swap with Iran

When an Italian journalist was arrested in Iran in December, her boyfriend back home feared she might linger in prison for years. So, amid talk that Iran and Italy were negotiating a prisoner swap that involved the United States, he says, he decided to try to get a message to someone who might be in a position to help.

His name was Elon Musk.

Not only was Musk close to President-elect Donald Trump, but a month before the journalist was detained, the tech billionaire had a secret meeting with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations.

Last week, the journalist, Cecilia Sala, 29, was released from prison in Iran, and days later an Iranian engineer whom Italy had detained on an American extradition request was also freed. The engineer was accused of providing material for drones used in an Iranian-backed militia attack on a U.S. military base that killed three American service members.

Musk helped secure the release of Sala by reaching out to Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., Amir Saeid Iravani, according to two Iranian officials, one a senior diplomat at the Foreign Ministry, who are both familiar with the terms of the prisoner exchange. They asked that their names not to be published because they were discussing a sensitive issue.

Neither Musk nor representatives of the Trump transition responded to repeated requests for comment.

How Musk, an increasingly active if uncredentialed player on the world stage since the Trump victory, came to take up the journalist’s cause remains unclear. He is close with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who traveled to Mar-a-Lago, the Trump estate in Florida where Musk has been a regular, and met with the president-elect Jan 4.

Meloni said at a news conference last week that Sala’s release was the result of a “complex work of diplomatic triangulation with Iran, and obviously also with the United States of America.” Her office and the Italian Foreign Ministry declined to comment for this article.

A senior Biden administration official said the American government had not been consulted about the negotiations, had not been given advance word about the releases and disapproved of the deal. John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, said that the deal had been “an Italian decision from soup to nuts.”

At the news conference, Meloni said she did not know what part if any Musk had played in Sala’s release. “If he had a role, I am not aware of it,” she said.

The ambiguity highlights the unusual role Musk has been playing as he sits at Trump’s side, backing far-right parties in Europe even as he continues to promote his business interests abroad. Italy, for example, is exploring a potential deal with Musk’s Space X to provide secure communications for government and military officials through Starlink. Meloni has been one of Musk’s ever-present European allies, hosting him at her party’s conference in 2023 and attending a gala with him in October.

By the time of Meloni’s trip to Mar-a-Lago, Sala’s boyfriend, Daniele Raineri, had sought out Musk’s help through an intermediary, he said. In an interview, Raineri said that he had thought of him because he had read that there was “a channel between Musk and the Iranian diplomats, and that Musk also works in close contact with Trump.”

Raineri, who is also a journalist, said he fired off a message Dec. 29 to an Italian computer expert and associate of Musk’s to ask if he could bring Sala’s case to the billionaire’s attention and seek his help.

The computer expert, Andrea Stroppa, said in an interview that Musk had acknowledged the request but that he did not know whether Musk had become involved in the case.

In November, weeks before Sala was arrested, Musk met for more than an hour with the Iranian ambassador at the Iranian’s residence in New York City to discuss defusing tensions between Tehran and Washington as a new administration prepared to take power.

The Iranian officials interviewed for this article said that Musk contacted the ambassador again shortly after Meloni visited Mar-a-Lago.

The prisoner exchange between Iran and Italy then unfolded rapidly. Iran released Sala on Jan. 8, and four days later, Italy freed the Iranian engineer, Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi.

Abedini had been detained at the request of the U.S. Justice Department.

A federal court in Massachusetts accused him of procuring drone technology for Iran that was used in the attack on the U.S. base, which was in Jordan, in January 2024. The two Iranian officials said that when Musk spoke with the ambassador, he requested that Iran release Sala and reassured him that the United States would not pressure Italy to extradite the Iranian engineer.

Iran’s mission to the U.N. declined to comment on the recent engagement between Musk and the ambassador.

In a statement, it said the two detainees had been released as a result of “bilateral cooperation and coordinated efforts of the political and intelligence sectors of Iran and Italy.”

All sides are being circumspect in public about what transpired, but to many observers the speedy release of the prisoners after the meeting between Trump and Meloni suggested that the topic had been discussed and a resolution was reached.

“The most likely reconstruction is that she got a signal of understanding from Trump that the incoming administration would not raise huge problems if it released Abedini,” said Ferdinando Nelli Feroci, a former Italian diplomat.

Italy detained Abedini in mid-December as he was transiting through Milan’s airport. Three days later, agents from the intelligence wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard raided Sala’s hotel room in Tehran and threw her into solitary confinement at Evin prison. She had traveled to Iran on a journalist visa.

A member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the two Iranian officials said the journalist had been arrested to pressure Italy to release Abedini.

Iran has made the detention of foreign and dual nationals a centerpiece of its foreign policy for nearly five decades.

“It doesn’t matter who you are,” Shahin Modarres, a Rome-based expert on Iran and international security, said in a telephone interview. “You can be a journalist, a diplomat, a tourist.” He said, “What matters is if Iran thinks it can use you as leverage.”

Sala said in an interview that she had been held in a cell with no mattress and had slept on the floor with one blanket on top and another below. For weeks, she was denied her glasses, and throughout her detention she did not see a human face. She could hear the sound of other inmates crying and vomiting, she said, and was blindfolded and interrogated for hours nearly every day, she said.

What she feared the most, she said, was “that I would go insane.”

Raineri, her boyfriend, said that Jan. 2, Meloni told Sala’s mother that within the next 48 hours there would be an important development.

Stroppa, the programmer, dropped hints on his account on social platform X. He posted a portrayal of Trump, Meloni and Musk in ancient Roman attire on the day the prime minister visited Mar-a-Lago. And on the day Sala was released, he posted an artificial intelligence-generated photo of Musk eating spaghetti with an Italian flag emoji.

Sala said she understood that Italy’s government did what it had to do to free her. “And whoever it was they needed to talk to, they talked to,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.