In March
2015, US President Hussein Obama called for Iran to release three US citizens
held hostage by Iranian officials (Emma Hinchliffe, “Obama calls for release of
Americans held in Iran”, USAToday, March 20, 2015). One of the hostages
has been held for three years. In addition, a fourth US citizen was (and is
still) considered ‘missing’ in Iran. Obama also called on Iran to help find
him.
That call
for release occurred during nuclear talks with Iran. But the call was not linked
to the talks. It was simply a plea for mercy during the Persian New Year
celebration which was taking place at that time.
A couple of
weeks later, after officials announced that the talks would continue after a
March 30, 2015 deadline, US TV personality Montel Williams criticized Obama.
Williams had been trying to secure the release of one of the hostages. He
couldn’t believe the Obama administration would pursue a deal with Iran without
bringing home these US citizens (“Fiery
Montel: How Dare We Make a Deal With Iran While Americans Are Still
Held?!”, FoxNewsInsider, April 3, 2015). Williams said that Obama had
just announced that his ‘deal’ with Iran had satisfied the United States' ‘core
objectives’. But Williams’ reaction to that was, how could Obama do that while
these Americans remained imprisoned? (ibid).
Although US
Secretary of State John Kerry had declared that ‘conversations are continuing
on the release of American prisoners’ (ibid), Williams didn’t believe that,
either. He said that, based on his personal interactions with the US State
department, he had ‘no idea what Kerry meant with that statement’ (ibid). Williams
added that the State Department had told him he was ‘pompous’ for speaking out
about this issue.
He seemed
particularly upset that Kerry hadn’t even called the family of the hostage he
(Williams) was concerned about. No one at State would tell the family what was
happening.
Two months
later, a couple of US Congressman announced that the White House should link
the success of the Iran negotiations to the fate of the Americans who remained
in Iran (Felicia Schwartz, “Lawmakers: Americans Held In Iran Complicate
Nuclear Talks”, Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2015). Their attitude was,
there should be no agreement, period, until the hostages were released (ibid).
The State
department said negotiators had raised this issue in every round of nuclear
negotiations, but “those discussions aren’t working” (ibid). One inference from
this assertion was, the US simply wasn’t persuasive enough to move the Iranians
on this point. A second inference was, the US simply wasn’t all that interested
in hostages while it focused on Iran’s nuclear program.
We learned
more about the true US position on these captives last week, after the
agreement with Iran was completed. During a post-deal news conference, Obama
was asked how he could celebrate the deal while abandoning hostages who were
imprisoned and reportedly tortured (Brian Hayes, “After Leaving American Hostages
to Rot in Iran, Obama Just Did the UNTHINKABLE”, TopRightNews, July 18,
2015). Obama answered the question by suggesting that the US had deliberately not tied the
nuclear negotiations to the Americans’ release (ibid). That linkage, he
suggested, might have hurt or killed the
nuclear deal.
That wasn’t
the end of the story. After abandoning the hostages, the US ‘did the
unthinkable’ (ibid). Obama ordered the release of a top Iranian scientist who had
been arrested in California (in 2011) for attempting to acquire equipment for
Iran’s military nuclear program (ibid). The US explanation for this release was
that a series of prisoner releases had been done through ‘secret back-channel’
talks that had begun long before. These prison-release talks had, the US
claimed, led to the current nuclear negotiations.
That
suggested that prisoner/hostage releases were in fact connected to the nuclear
talks. Brian Hayes (above) wrote, “I
thought Obama said any talk of releasing our hostages would kill the
deal. But his ‘negotiators’” had instead arranged the release of their
prisoners [emphasis his]” (ibid).
Hayes couldn’t
believe this had happened. He felt Obama had betrayed America (ibid).
Of course, the
US suggested that these secret talks were about “a series of prisoner releases
by both sides” (ibid). But no one has stepped forward to identify any Americans
who had benefitted from this arrangement.
The only
prisoners connected to these ‘back-channel’ talks to be released were Iranians
held by the US.
A week after
the ‘agreement’ was announced, Obama gave a speech at a Pittsburgh, Pa. convention
for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) (Andrew Husband, “Obama Demands Release
of Detained Americans While Defending Iran Deal”, mediaite, July 21,
2015). Obama said, “We are not going to
relent until we bring home our American who are unjustly detained in Iran”
(ibid).
Such post-deal
determination rings hollow. During the talks, Obama had a bargaining position
against Iran. Iran wanted a deal. It wanted its frozen 100+billion dollars.
But Obama hadn’t
been relentless about the hostages at that time. He’d caved in. Becoming
relentless now seemed pointless.
Hussein
Obama fails to help America. He fails to help Americans.
He will not
stand strong in the face of America’s enemies. He will not fight to defend his
country.
He’s no
Churchill. He’s the anti-Churchill. He helps the enemy.
If you’re
thinking about making aliyah, do it now. America will betray your trust.
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