Posted on 01/17/2016 4:48:16 AM PST by Dave346
As the families of Americans celebrate the release of their loved ones held in Iran, the authorities in Tehran said they would not be freeing a businessman arrested in October and were silent on the fate of a former FBI agent who disappeared in the country.
It was unclear why Siamak Namazi, 44, an Iranian American based in Dubai, was arrested in October while visiting a friend in Tehran where he had done consultant work over the previous decade.
U.S. officials said Saturday that they would continue to talk with Iran to secure the release of Namazi as well as to obtain information about the whereabouts of Robert Levinson, 67, who went missing on an Iranian island in March 2007.
News that Levinson had not been freed left his family distraught.
“Of course we are happy for those families, but angry and devastated,†Suzanne Halpin, the sister of Levinson’s wife, said in an email.
The Levinsons have hoped for years that their father would eventually be released after a deal was reached to limit the Iranian nuclear program.
The family thought the United States had “squandered its best opportunity for leverage in ensuring my father’s safe return home,†Levinson’s son, Daniel, wrote late last year in The Washington Post, after Iran and six world powers struck a nuclear deal.
It was an ominous sign that he wasn’t released with other the Americans, officials said.
“They were given every opportunity to save face,†a U.S. intelligence official said Saturday. “We are still not giving up.â€
The Iranians have never acknowledged holding Levinson, and some former and current U.S. intelligence officials fear that he might be dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
State Dept flights land in Iran all the time. They could fly anything they want in on the same flight as the Iranian convicts.
Maybe... maybe not...
1980 : (MD : AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSLIM CONVERT DAVID BELFIELD a/k/a HASSAN ABDULRAHMAN a/k/a DAWUD SALAHUDDIN ASSASSINATES ALI ACKBAR TABATABAI, ONE OF THE SHAH OF IRAN’S DIPLOMATS ; DAVID BELFIELD WOULD GO ON TO BECOME AN EDITOR FOR IRANIAN PRESS TV AND BE THE LAST PERSON TO SEE FORMER FBI AGENT LEVINSON ON MARCH 8, 2007 BEFORE HE WAS ABDUCTED FROM KISH, AN ISLAND OFF THE COAST OF IRAN)
Levinson was supposedly investigating cigarette smuggling. Cig smuggling was a Hezbollah specialty.
That I didn’t know thank you for pointing that out. So that pretty much throws my theory out the window.
Levinson - who was working for several companies, [maybe a British one?] was abducted 2 weeks before the Iranians -in small boats- pulled a similar stunt to what we just witnessed with our riverine team. Their small craft converged on a British navy boat as if friendly then presented weapons and started giving orders, then later lied about the British vessel being in their waters.
The regime pretty much runs their criminal syndicates.
Yep.. a British one ...
British American Tobacco.
Maybe capturing the British Naval vessel was a special warning message from the regime’s IRGC to the board of that ‘company’ for sending him.
If so, then this event could be such a message as well, from IRGC to Namazi’s ‘employer.’
What’s to stop him from giving clemency to the Blind Sheikh, if anything?
Don’t assume the boats made a shortcut when it is likely the Iranians just nabbed them in international waters. The Iranians have lied before on where they encountered the vessels of other nations.
Yep he can pardon anyone he wants. There aren’t really any “rules”, only a current method by which is usually gets done. Which of course this instance proves all you need “is a pen and a phone”.
Regards the boats, they likely were in international waters and the current ROE/Obama house rules being what they are, instead of shooting their attackers, they surrender and a story is made up to “prove” that Iran was not making an act of war.
There were pictures of him, I believe a video too, where he has grey hair and beard. That isn’t going to circulate without the Iranian gov’t knowing what happened & where he is, mafia or not.
That’s why it’s been suspected that he’s been held in Lebanon
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