Wash Post Rips Iran for Jason Rezaian ‘Conviction’, But Not Obama for Hanging Him Out to Dry

by Dan Calabrese

You can certainly understand the Washington Post standing up for one of its own. And its editors do so eloquently in an editorial this morning that denounces Iran’s absurd “conviction” of Post reporter Jason Rezaian – a development they now say occurred two months ago even as they decline to specify the so-called charges on which Rezaian has been “convicted.”

Rezaian has now been held hostage by the Iranian government longer than the American hostages of the Carter era, and the Post lays bare just how ludicrous this whole thing is:

Mr. Rezaian, who was arrested with his wife in their home on July 22, 2014, was held for months in solitary confinement without charge, in violation of Iranian law. He was then subjected to a secret trial on several charges, reportedly including espionage, in which the prosecution presented no live witnesses and no substantial evidence. Now, well after the deadline set by law, he has been subjected to a secret verdict. His lawyer, Leila Ahsan, told the Times that while an appeal is possible, she can’t contest a judgment she hasn’t seen. “Now, I do not know what I am appealing against,” she was quoted as saying.

This travesty ought to shame the Iranian government into releasing the journalist — if only to forestall questions from would-be international investors in Iran, who have to wonder whether their personnel will be vulnerable to similarly arbitrary arrests and secret trials. Instead, President Hassan Rouhani appears to hope that Mr. Rezaian can be used as a bargaining chip to obtain the release of 19 Iranians he says were imprisoned in the United States for violating sanctions. A state television report Monday may have been trying to advance this cause when it claimed that Mr. Rezaian had provided the U.S. government with information about individuals who engaged in sanctions busting.

Add that to the constantly shifting array of ludicrous charges that have been advanced by Iranian media against Mr. Rezaian since his arrest. Last week it was reported that he had conspired with U.S. senators to improve U.S.-Iranian relations, a development supposedly calculated to bring down the regime. What’s true is that Mr. Rezaian, who was born in California but is of Iranian heritage, pursued journalism in part to improve Americans’ understanding of Iran. Most people would consider that a good thing.

In fact, Rezaian is one of four Americans being held by Iran. The others are Pastor Saeed Abedini of Boise, Idaho; retired Marine Amir Hekmati of Flint, Michigan; and former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared eight years ago from the resort island of Kish. Every single of them is the equivalent of the 44 Americans for whom we tied yellow ribbons around tries in 1979-1980, held hostage by the exact same insane Islamic regime that did it back then. The same regime with which we cut off diplomatic ties as a result of the incident.

Yet as well as the Post tells Rezaian’s story, its editorial leaves out a crucial detail. While even Jimmy Carter took an adversarial stance toward Iran’s hostage-takers (albeit a pretty ineffective one), Barack Obama decided to negotiate a deal that will allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, with his Secretary of State John Kerry even going so far as to act as Iran’s de facto lawyer before other parties to the deal, and ripping U.S. Republicans who dared to oppose the deal on the grounds that if it didn’t go through, thepoor Ayatollah would never be able to trust us again. Obama is even willing to violate a law he signed just three years ago to make possible the lifting of economic sanctions against Iran.

And most egregiously of all, Obama and Kerry refused to demand the release of Rezaian, Abedini, Hekmati and Levinson as a condition of the deal. It’s not as if no one raised the issue, but throughout the nuclear talks Obama and Kerry refused to link the two issues. Now it appears the only possible chance of seeing the four released would be for us to release 19 Iranians, who helped facilitate violations of the existing sanctions. That sounds like an Obama negotiation all right. We get four, they get 19.