WASHINGTON (JTA) — Driven to desperation by what he said have been the White House’s failures, Robert Levinson’s son traveled to Iran to seek information on his father’s whereabouts.
“In late February, I traveled to Iran’s Kish Island in the Persian Gulf, where my father was last seen,” Dan Levinson said in an Op-Ed published Thursday in the Washington Post.
“I delivered a letter addressed to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other officials who I believe have knowledge of his abduction,” he wrote. “I met with officials from Iran’s Foreign Ministry and listened to the denials we have grown accustomed to over the years. I was told I’d be given an official response to my letter but have yet to receive one.”
Robert Levinson, who is Jewish, went missing in 2007 from Iran’s Kish Island during what has since been revealed as a rogue CIA operation.
Levinson, 68, of Coral Springs, Florida, was not part of a prisoner exchange with Iran in January that was timed to launch the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. Instead, the Obama administration said Iran had pledged to help track him.
Dan Levinson in the Op-Ed said the Obama administration had missed opportunities to obtain information on his father, particularly during the talks that led to the nuclear rollbacks for sanctions relief deal between Iran and six major powers.
“The Obama administration must press harder to reach those few people with the power to send my father home,” he wrote.
