Last week, a State Department spokesman issued a well-meaning statement about the plight of Siamak Namazi, an American citizen held hostage by the Islamic Republic along with his eighty-four-year-old father. The younger Namazi was first told he couldn’t leave Iran in July 2015—the same month the nuclear agreement was finalized—and was sentenced to prison on October 18, just one day before the deal’s official “adoption day.” Yesterday, indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran with the aim of restoring the nuclear deal (formally known as the JCPOA) began in Vienna. Elliott Abrams comments:

[We] all know what [the Siamaks’ imprisonment] says about Iran—the manufactured prison sentences, the kangaroo courts, the cruelty. But also note their contempt for the United States, signaled by their sentencing of Siamak Namazi to ten years just one day before “adoption” of the JCPOA in 2015. They guessed correctly that American talk about doing all we can to get our hostages returned did not include delaying the lifting of U.S. sanctions by one single day.

The question is whether another American administration is about to do it again, and tragically the answer appears to be yes. . . . Instead of fine words from the State Department spokesman . . . what the Namazis need is a commitment to get them out before we agree to anything with Iran. The spokesman called this meeting in Vienna “a healthy step forward,” and Rob Malley, special representative for Iran, called it “a first step . . . on the right path.” A better and healthier first step would be a commitment to freedom for these unjustly imprisoned Americans. The “right path” would lead them home.

[Biden] administration officials are negotiating now to give the Iranian regime something it badly wants: sanctions relief. To lift the key financial and petroleum sanctions without gaining the release of the American hostages in Iran is in effect to abandon them—again.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.