The State Department’s annual report on the state of human rights across the globe—which it is required by law to submit to Congress—is now 115 days late. Elliott Abrams is skeptical about the excuses offered by Foggy Bottom, and suggests that something besides procrastination is at play:

[Perhaps], the Obama administration does not wish to make public an honest report on human-rights abuses in Iran before the nuclear deal is done. The continuing delay makes that explanation more and more persuasive.

The [State Department’s] argument that [the official rollout of the report] is so important to President Obama and Secretary Kerry that Kerry and only Kerry must preside [over it] strikes me as nonsense. Neither man has paid much attention to human rights while in office, human-rights budgets are declining, and human-rights advocates write constantly about the diminishing U.S. interest in the subject. In fact, the reports speak for themselves, and any high State Department official could preside over a little ceremony releasing them. . . .

There are two likely explanations for the delay and they are not inconsistent. The administration (a) isn’t all that interested in the reports except (b) to the extent that they could be used against the Iran deal, by reminding people in Congress of the nature of the evil regime in Tehran. So, here we are: the longest delay in releasing the human-rights reports ever, and by very far. Who said the Obama administration wasn’t making history?

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.