President Trump’s administration is sanctioning two senior Iranian intelligence officials for their role in the disappearance and “probable death” of former FBI agent Robert Levinson.
“The government of Iran pledged to provide assistance in bringing Bob Levinson home, but it has never followed through,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Monday. “The truth is that Iranian intelligence officers, with the approval of senior Iranian officials, were involved in Bob’s abduction and detention.”
Levinson’s family has blamed Tehran for the former FBI agent’s disappearance in 2007 for years, but the new sanctions identify specific culprits, Mohammad Baseri and Ahmad Khazai, at the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. And the sanction announcement served a wider policy purpose, as well, as the Trump administration argued that Joe Biden should demand the release of all other American hostages in Iran in the nuclear negotiations expected next year.
“Mohammad Baseri is a high-ranking MOIS officer involved in counterespionage activities in and outside of Iran, who has been involved in sensitive investigations related to Iranian national security issues,” the Treasury Department said Monday. “Baseri has worked directly with intelligence officials from other countries in order to harm U.S. interests. Ahmad Khazai is a high-ranking member of the MOIS who, in his role as a senior official of the MOIS, has led MOIS delegations to other countries to assess the security situation.”
“No family should ever endure the pain the Levinson family has for nearly 14 years,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. “Iran is responsible and can end this nightmare by answering questions for which only they hold the answers. Any future talks with Iran must include resolution to this case.”
Another senior government official broadened that point to include the remaining “three Americans detained in Iran” — the 84-year-old Baquer Namazi, his son Siamak, and Morad Tahbaz.
“There should be no agreement negotiated with Iran, ever again, that doesn’t free the Americans who are unjustly detained in that country,” the senior government official said. “We all expect a negotiation next year. That negotiation must include the return home of all the Americans unjustly detained in that country.”
Levinson reportedly went to Iran’s Kish Island as a CIA contractor, only to disappear and become the longest-held American hostage in U.S. history. Iran denied responsibility for his disappearance, and a “proof-of-life” video surfaced in 2011, but the Trump administration revealed information to his family earlier this year that has “led both them and us to conclude that our wonderful husband and father died while in Iranian custody,” according to a statement from his family in March.
The conclusion that he had died marked a tragic denouement for a family that had rebuked senior Trump administration officials for seeming to neglect to “take the interest” in his case needed to achieve a breakthrough, as Robert’s wife Christine charged in a 2019 congressional hearing.
The sanctions announcement also demonstrated the divisions within the Trump administration about the finality of the 2020 elections. Whereas senior White House adviser Stephen Miller predicted Monday morning that “an alternate slate of electors” will move to return Trump to the White House in 2020, the official discussing Levinson’s case spoke as a likely bystander to the expected Iran negotiations.
“No more big agreements with Iran that ignore and in a sense abandon Americans who are in prison there,” the senior government official said. “Bob Levinson’s case is a reminder that there are other Americans imprisoned in Iran, and I think it’s right to make the point that any negotiations with Iran has to include these Americans and has to bring them home.”
