Amir Hekmati

What would you do after being held hostage in an Iranian dungeon for a year and a half on kangaroo-court charges of “espionage?” Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian said he wants to catch up on the new Star Wars movie and watch some basketball games.

Iran State TV station FARS announced Saturday morning that four American dual-nationality prisoners were released from Iranian custody in a “prisoner swap” with the United States.

Kidnapped American Robert Levinson’s son Daniel penned an op-ed for the Washington Post over the weekend, in which he warned those who would visit Iran in pursuit of business opportunities created by the nuclear deal to exercise extreme caution. “My family and I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous traveling to Iran remains,” Daniel Levinson wrote.

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s campaign offered public support to the cause of freeing American hostages in Iran.

Iran has taken another American citizen captive. On Tuesday, Iran’s state-owned IRIB news network announced that the regime had arrested Nizar Ahmad Zakka, a Lebanese-American from Riverside, California with alleged “deep ties” to the U.S. military and intelligence services on suspicion of espionage.

As the White House hails a breakthrough in its diplomatic effort to curb Iran’s nuclear program, several under-reported facts cast a shadow over any real, or imagined, success. President Obama’s assurance that “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off” for Iran flies in the face of reality.

Last year, the Senate called on President Obama to “use the tools it has in pursuit of what should be a bipartisan goal: securing the release of American citizens being held as hostages by the regime in Iran.” Today, in the announcement of a nuclear deal with Iran that ignores the plight of these three hostages, the Obama administration has left behind a Christian preacher, a journalist, and a U.S. Marine.