WASHINGTON — Iran’s top diplomat Sunday shrugged off the disappearance of purported US spy Robert Levinson, who went missing seven years ago in the Islamic republic.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Levinson’s fate was “a mystery” and that he had “no idea” where he was.
“What we know [is] that he is not incarcerated in Iran,” Zarif said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “If he is, he’s not incarcerated by the government.”
But Secretary of State John Kerry, who recently negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran, said that the Tehran government could help find Levinson, 65.
“I can’t tell you what happened or how the sequence was, but I think the Iranian government has the ability to help us here, and we hope they will,” Kerry said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We’re working on several processes that I’m not free to talk about. But there are a number of different channels that are being worked aggressively,” he said.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he doesn’t “think there’s any doubt” about whether Iran knows what happened to Levinson, a former FBI agent. McCain also blasted the CIA for not telling the truth.
“The CIA did not tell the truth to the American Congress about Mr. Levinson,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The case attracted fresh attention last week with a new report by the Associated Press and Washington Post that he was working for some CIA officials on a rogue mission in Iran when he disappeared.
The US government and the Levinson family had insisted that he was not working for the government since he first went missing in March 2007 during a visit to the Iranian island of Kish.
After the new reports, however, the Levinson family came forward for the first time and claimed not only that Levinson was working for the CIA but that the government abandoned him when he was captured in Iran.
The White House still insisted Friday that Levinson was not a US government employee when he disappeared.
The last videos and pictures showing Levinson alive surfaced in 2011.
In one photo, a bearded Levinson with chains around his wrists and neck holds a sign that reads: “Why you can not help me.”