President Donald Trump told Fox News he doesn’t believe that Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s next supreme leader, “can live in peace.”
The family of American hostage Kamran Hekmati, who has been wrongfully detained in Iran since May 2025, has been told that he is no longer in Evin Prison, Fox News has learned. The family does not know where Hekmati is as Operation Epic Fury enters an eleventh day.
“Our family has heard the reports that Kamran is no longer in Evin Prison,' his family said in a statement to Fox News. 'While we are hopeful, these reports are unconfirmed and the family has not heard from Kamran since learning of them. We are cautiously optimistic. Regardless, we don’t want to do anything that would put Kamran at any greater risk – whether inside Evin Prison or outside.' The family also directly appealed to the Trump administration. 'We are hopeful that the Trump Administration will make it a priority to secure the safety of Kamran and all the other Americans currently in Iran,' the statement added. Hekmati, a 70-year-old resident of Great Neck, New York, was sentenced to prison in Iran last summer while in the country to visit family. Iranian authorities charged Hekmati with “making a trip to Israel” 13 years before visiting Iran. Hekmati, a dual American-Iranian citizen and a Persian Jew, was born in Iran and traveled to Israel in 2012 to attend his son’s Bar Mitzvah. At least six Americans are known to be wrongfully detained by the Iranian regime. Their fate during Operation Epic Fury has been largely unknown so far. The hostage team working with Hekmati's family told Fox News' Gillian Turner that Operation Epic Fury is one of great risk and great hope for these imprisoned Americans. 'What we're hearing are really just rumors at this point. There's a lot of swirl around what's happening at the prison and what's happened with prisoners in general,' Kamran family representative Kieran Ramsey told Fox News. 'We saw reports that there were prisoners being used possibly as human shields. We heard reports of prisoners being moved out to different prisons elsewhere. And we've heard that the prison guards that were normally assigned to prison have been swapped out with special counter-terrorism police, whatever that is,' Ramsey said. 'This is obviously a particularly dangerous time with military action underway. This is now essentially an act of war zone, right?' Ramsey added. 'On top of that, we have Americans that are being held in a prison that has been previously targeted by the Israeli military. So there's that risk. On top that, you have Americans. And in the case of our client, Kamran Hekmati, he's an American and he's also of the Jewish faith. So our fear for reprisals from prison guards, from other prisoners is up there. And let's say they for some reason swung open the doors and everybody gets out. You're still getting out into an active war zone. So we have a lot of concerns right now.' Fox News' Danielle Wallace, Gillian Turner and Benjamin Weinthal contributed to this report.
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