{"id":63890,"date":"2016-01-16T14:35:58","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T19:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=63890"},"modified":"2016-01-16T14:35:58","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T19:35:58","slug":"four-hostages-released-by-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=63890","title":{"rendered":"Four hostages released by Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Make no mistake, these fellow that have been released were nothing more than hostages. We paid the Iranian government $150 billion ransom for their release along with lifting the sanctions against the country. Otherwise, these completely innocent people would have released long ago not hours before the funds are released and sanctions are lifted. From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/world\/2016\/01\/16\/iran-releases-4-american-prisoners-including-pastor-and-reporter-in-swap-us-official-says.html?intcmp=hpbt1\">Fox News<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Pastor Saeed Abedini, Washington Post reporter Jason Razaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati and Nosratollah Khosravi were freed in the dramatic exchange that comes as crippling sanctions on Iran are set to be lifted following years of negotiations to brig Iran\u2019s nuclear program into UN compliance.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The release of prisoners does not appear to include Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent last seen in Iran but whose status is unknown. The 67-year-old disappeared in 2007 while working for the CIA on an unapproved intelligence mission. American officials are unsure if the former FBI agent is even still alive. Iranian officials deny knowing where he is. Levinson traveled to Kish island and checked into hotel, purportedly investigating cigarette smuggling. He met U.S. fugitive Dawud Salahuddin, the last man known to see him.<\/p>\n<p>The CIA family paid Levinson&#8217;s family over $2 million and some staffers lost their jobs over his unauthorized work. A proof of life video surfaced in 2011, saying Levinson was held by a group. His family received photos that year, too, of Levinson bearded, shackled, wearing orange jumpsuit and holding signs in broken English.<\/p>\n<p>As part of the deal announced Saturday, Iran also agreed to continue cooperating with the United States to determine the whereabouts of Levinson.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In exchange, the US is giving Iran back some agents of the Islamic Republic who were convicted of violating the sanctions we&#8217;re now lifting as part of a nuclear deal.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure that the Iranian government has sights set on their next American &#8220;prisoners&#8221; for their next blackmail attempt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Make no mistake, these fellow that have been released were nothing more than hostages. We paid &hellip; <a title=\"Four hostages released by Iran\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=63890\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Four hostages released by Iran<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}