The US Treasury Department announced sanctions on two Iranian intelligence officials for their alleged role in the 2007 disappearance of former FBI agent Robert Levinson. The sanctions targeted two members of Iran’s intelligence ministry.
“Today, the US Department of the Treasury designated two senior officials of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), who were involved in the abduction of Robert A. ‘Bob’ Levinson on Iran’s Kish Island on or about March 9, 2007,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.
In 2013, The Associated Press revealed that Levinson was in Iran on an unauthorized intelligence-gathering mission for the CIA. According to the report, three of the CIA analysts who hired him had no authority to run spy operations and were fired over the mission.
The AP knew about Levinson’s CIA ties since 2010 but was asked by the US government to hold the story over fears of the report jeopardizing the investigation into his whereabouts. The US initially claimed Levinson was in Iran working as a private investigator.
The Iranian government has maintained that Levinson is not in its custody. In March, the US government and Levinson’s family concluded that the former FBI agent was likely dead.
The sanctions against Iran are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up the pressure on Tehran as much as possible before January 20th. Last month, US envoy for Iran Elliot Abrams said the administration plans to slap new sanctions on Iran every week until Biden’s inauguration.
“Levinson was in Iran on an unauthorized intelligence-gathering mission”
As always, should you or any of your forces be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions
Doing work in Iran for the CIA is not the safest thing to do.
Taking out someone spying in YOUR country gets you sanctioned. Killing generals and nuclear scientists in THEIR country is self defense.
His family has dragged this too long and must move on….! Or, they are being played out by US to keep the Iranophobia, propaganda and sanctioning Iran…!
Likely died in Iranian custody of natural causes since he had type 1 diabetes. The biggest mistake that Iran made was in not admitting they had him in custody after link to CIA was exposed, few could argue with a straight face that a country has no right to detain foreign agents.
There is an outside chance some other group abducted him. I do feel bad for him and his family. His son always pleaded for his return in a very professional manner, never sounded like a MEK activist. Levinson was just doing his job of Intel gathering. If we were not so childishly hostile to Iran, we could have offered a prisoner exchange.
“Levinson was in Iran on an unauthorized intelligence-gathering mission for the CIA.”
How is that “just doing his job”?
Everybody spies on everybody. I don’t see anything wrong with doing Intelligence collection for your country. It’s sabotage, assassinations, and supporting insurrections that I have an issue with.
Iran, Russia, China all spy on us and for some reason we have a hissy fit. It’s the job of the host country to catch spies and once in while make a trade for them. No reason for countries to get all insane about it. Iran has never executed foreign nationals for spying unless they were involved in insurrections or assassinations.
“unauthorized intelligence-gathering”
I’m not sure how it was “unauthorized” if he was doing it “for the CIA” but that was the basis for my comment.