December 27-2013
US Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, volunteered last week to fly to Tehran if it could help free retired FBI agent Robert Levinson.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Nelson said he had spoken with Mohammad Khazaee, Iran’s ambassador to the UN. Nelson said he offered, “If it would in any way help, then I am willing to go to Iran, if in any way that would secure his release.”
He didn’t say how he imagined that might help. Nor did he say how Khazaee responded to his offer.
Iran has said numerous times that it has never held Levinson and has no idea where he is. But Daoud Salahuddin, a former American who has lived in Iran for three decades and met with Levinson on Kish Island, has said the Iranian police were holding Levinson when Salahuddin last saw him.
Nelson alluded to that in his Senate speech. “If the Iranian authorities took him, somebody in the government of Iran knows of his whereabouts,” Nelson said.
But the State Department has long been concerned that saying Iran holds Levinson will only make it harder to win his freedom given that Iran consistently denies any knowledge. For that reason, the State Department has never blamed Iran. More than a year ago, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton carefully said that Washington believed Levinson was detained somewhere in “southwest Asia,” an area that includes Iran and many other counties.
This was a signal that Washington hoped would encourage Iran to free Levinson in some other country in the region and the United States would not blame Iran.
On Friday, Levinson’s wife and some of their children met in Washington with the new director of the FBI, James Comey. A family statement said they sought the meeting “to call on the US government to fulfill its moral obligation” to seek Levinson’s release.
According to news stories this month, Levinson had a contract to provide analyses for the CIA. But the contract had expired before Levinson went to Kish Island and the CIA staffer who had hired Levinson said she had never directed him to go inside Iran and would never have done so.
