Twice last week, Iranian military vessels maneuvered dangerously close to American warships in international waters. The editors of the New York Post explain Tehran’s confidence that it won’t face anything worse than warning shots:

[A]s Iran well knows, the administration isn’t about to do anything that might endanger the nuclear deal and expose the futility of the president’s insistence that Iran will become “a member of the family of nations.”

And it’s not just Iran: in other corners of the world, Russian and Chinese jets this year have been buzzing U.S. ships in a clear-cut test of Washington’s resolve—a test this president is flunking. . . .

[Similarly], there have been no repercussions for Iran’s post-deal tests of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, in clear violation of UN sanctions. . . .

So the stakes will only keep rising. If Iran managed to snag $1.7 billion for five American captives, imagine how much the mullahs will demand when they take a billion-dollar battleship hostage.

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.