Opinion

Iran & the longest-held US hostage

In the same week President Obama celebrated a historic “breakthrough” with Iran over its nuclear program, America marks a somber anniversary.

Retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, believed in Iranian custody, has now become the longest-held US hostage in history. Levinson, 65, vanished in Iran in 2007.

Levinson’s captivity passes that of Terry Anderson, who was held for 2,454 days in the late ’80s, also by agents of Iran. The milestone ‎serves as a useful reminder of the nature of the regime America is dealing with as the administration negotiates with Tehran over its nuclear-weapons ambitions.

Here it helps to remember that Levinson is only the longest-held US hostage believed in Iranian hands. There’s also Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Idaho sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran for trying to set up Christian churches there. Pastor Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh, said the nuke deal the Obama administration announced has been “very painful” for her family. “My kids were crying this morning, saying, “God, don’t let Daddy die. Bring him home.’ ”

And then there’s Amir Hekmati, a decorated former Marine who’s been held for more than two years in Iran under what he describes as “miserable” conditions.

Meanwhile, in a letter to The New York Times, Stephen Flatow, a New Jersey lawyer whose 20-year-old daughter Alisa was murdered by Iranian-backed terrorists, recalls Iran’s role in the slaying of 241 American servicemen in Beirut and its record of exporting “murder and mayhem to Syria and Iraq.”

Notable, too, are the Iranian IED’s used to kill Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Iran’s support for terrorism across the globe.

Ronald Reagan drew heat for labeling the Soviet Union “The Evil Empire,” as George W. Bush did for calling Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “Axis of Evil.”

But they were right. And we’d sure feel better about Obama’s Iran deal if — just once — the president would talk about its leaders even half as honesty as his predecessors did about other enemies of the United States.