Joshua "Josh" Fattal, who grew up in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania,[6] graduated from UC Berkeley, worked as co-director of an environmental education center at Aprovecho in Oregon and travelled to Switzerland, India, China, and South Africa from January to May 2009 on a fellowship with the International Honors Program (IHP)'s "Health and Community" study abroad program.

[citation needed] Shane Bauer, who grew up both in Onamia, Minnesota and San Leandro, California,[6] is a freelance photojournalist and journalist who has reported for Democracy Now!,[7] Mother Jones, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets, using his fluency in Arabic.

[9] On July 31, 2009, Fattal, Shourd, and Bauer were detained by Iranian border guards while hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The three American detainees have claimed they were simply hikers who did not realize that they were in Iran and that they actually have lengthy backgrounds as social justice activists.

[15][16][17] They had been advised of the suitability of the region for a holiday by friends who had been there and through Internet research; and were recommended the Ahmed Awa waterfall, a popular Kurdish tourist destination, by a number of local people whilst they were in Sulaymaniyah.

[18] In June 2010, an article in The Nation indicated that two villagers said the hikers were accosted by Iranian authorities while they were on the Iraqi side of the border.

[20] The exact circumstances of their detention are unknown, but is illustrated in the first person by each of the three in their book, A Sliver of Light, released March 18, 2014.

Shourd remained in solitary confinement after Fattal and Bauer were put in the same cell at which point the three spent time together each day for two 30-minute periods.

[24] On September 14, 2010, after more than a year in prison, Sarah Shourd was released on 5 billion rial[5] (about US$465,000)[25] bail, paid by the Sultan of Oman.

Shourd's mother has said she had been denied treatment for serious health problems, including a breast lump and precancerous cervical cells.

[42] On September 13, 2011, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told NBC News that Fattal and Bauer would be released "in a couple of days" in a "humanitarian gesture".

[1] Shafiei said the bail of 5 billion rial[5] (about US$465,000)[25] for each of the men was posted, and they would be released into the custody of either Swiss diplomats or an Omani delegation.

[46] As early as 2009, according to WikiLeaks, Oman offered to arrange secret talks between the US and Iran, which hadn't had diplomatic relations for 30 years.

But it was the detention of the American hikers by Iran that brought Oman into a mediating role between the two sides and helped win the release of the detainees.

Ironically, efforts to win the release of the hikers turned out to be instrumental in making the clandestine diplomacy to reach an agreement on the nuclear program of Iran possible: after this successful mediation, Sultan Qaboos offered to facilitate a US–Iran rapprochement.

In March, US and Iranian officials met in Oman, Secretary of State John Kerry followed up in May, and the talks took on a momentum of their own after Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's June elections.