Do you think it means he's dead?
I don’t know. But it doesn’t necessarily have to mean that. It could be that they’ve reached a dead end and thought that revealing the video/photos might lead to new possibilities.
One thing people have been very slow to understand about the IRI and it’s hostages/kidnap victims.....keeping quiet about it is the worse thing you can do. The more noise & publicity it gets, the better the chances are that the victim will be returned and sooner rather than later.
With countries that practice isolation at the high caliber that Iran (and North Korea, as another example) practice isolation, anything is possible. This ex-FBI agent might be dead, or he might be alive. Such countries love to “toy” with the free world.