Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared while in Iran just over 13 years ago, has, for some time, been America’s longest-held hostage. On Wednesday, his family issued a statement acknowledging new information showing that Levinson is dead. A man who spent his career serving the United States will never come home and never meet the grandchildren born during his captivity.
What is certain is that Levinson traveled to Kish Island, an Iranian visa-free zone and resort island, to interview, among others, Dawud Salahuddin, an American convert to Islam who fled the U.S. for Iran after conducting a hit on behalf of the Islamic Republic, among others. After meeting Salahuddin, Levinson disappeared. That he was arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was certain, but what happened to him subsequently is murky.
Shortly after, President George W. Bush demanded Iranian leaders provide information on Levinson’s condition. “I call on Iran’s leaders to tell us what they know about his whereabouts,” he said. The Levinson family received a proof-of-life video in November 2010 and, in March 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that the State Department believed Levinson to be alive.
From his first day in office, President Barack Obama made rapprochement with Iran a foreign policy goal. He provided more than $4 billion in sanctions relief just for Iranian officials to sit at the table and negotiate what would eventually, in 2015, become the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the so-called Iran nuclear deal. That agreement, of course, netted the Iranian government up to $100 billion in sanctions relief, forgiven debt, and new aid and investment.
With so much at stake for Iran, the Obama administration had huge leverage to resolve Levinson’s case. President Hassan Rouhani, for example, acknowledged in the run-up to the nuclear negotiations that Iran’s GDP had declined by 5.4%. He was in desperate need for the cash infusion that Obama provided.
In the wake of the Iranian nuclear deal, the Obama administration paid Iran $1.4 billion to release American hostages held in Iran. Many came home. Levinson did not.
It is time Obama, former Secretary of State John Kerry, and those who worked the Iran hostage file in his office come clean and explain why they left Levinson behind. Did they sacrifice an American hostage to rush forward a deal and maintain, for political reasons, the illusion of better U.S.-Iran ties?
Did they accept Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s insistence that Iran did not hold Levinson? If so, why did they not demand an account from Iran as to what happened to Levinson while in Iranian custody and to whom he was subsequently released?
Did they believe Levinson dead? Was he? But even if he had perished, why could they not demand Iranian officials account for the circumstances of his death and return his body?
Perhaps Levinson never should have been on Kish Island in the first place, but he is certainly not the guilty party. Iranian leadership was solely responsible for this tragedy. But it appears increasingly likely that Obama, Kerry, and Kerry’s team left a man behind for the sake of political and diplomatic expediency, all the while rewarding the regime that kidnapped him with billions of dollars. That is a stain not only on their legacy but also on America’s honor.
It should be a bipartisan imperative to demand they explain what they knew, when they knew it, and the logic which motivated the decision to abandon Levinson to his Iranian captors.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
