Last Friday, unnamed sources in the Obama administration informed the Wall Street Journal that Jonathan Pollard, convicted of spying for Israel 30 years ago, would be released from prison in a few months. (The veracity of the information was swiftly denied by the U.S. attorney general, among others, but is now confirmed.) Jonathan Tobin comments:
[T]he attempt to inject the emotional issue [of Pollard’s continued imprisonment] into the already inflamed debate about Iran was a deeply cynical ploy that was clearly aimed at defusing anger about the administration’s efforts to defend a nuclear agreement by isolating Israel and its defenders. Whatever one may think of the merits of the case for clemency for Pollard —and at this point it is a strong one—this issue has no place in the discussion about Iran and should be dismissed out of hand by those seeking to push back against the administration’s efforts to silence its critics. . . .
As with past U.S. efforts to use Pollard’s possible release as a carrot with which to entice Israel to make territorial withdrawals, . . . the spy’s fate is irrelevant to the question of whether appeasement of Iran is justified. . . . Raising the prospect of his release is merely one more effort to convince supporters of Israel to acquiesce in President Obama’s embrace of détente with an Islamist regime that remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism as well as still dedicated to Israel’s destruction. . . .
The Pollard leak should be put down as just one more underhanded tactic by an administration that prefers to answer arguments about its Iran policy with smears about critics being warmongers rather than to defend it on the merits.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/07/27/pollard-release-leak/