Saeed Left in Iran

Here’s a great post about the United States government walking away from Saeed Abedini on the Public Secrets blog.

Last week America and other western countries signed a ridiculous agreement with Iran that will supposedly slow down their nuclear program. It resulted in the immediate lifting of certain sanctions and the release of billions of dollars to Iran.

We left Israel out in the cold on this one rather than standing by our longtime ally, a nation that’s going to be forced to strike Iran first or risk being wiped from the map by nuclear annihilation. And this means Iran’s government is allowed to continue its human rights abuses, including its illegal detention and torture of American pastor Saeed Abedini.

It would be easier to free Saeed if more Americans feel how Public Secrets does:

Not that I’m a religious person, but I believe very strongly in the natural right of all humans to freedom of speech and religion, and, within very broad bounds, government should stay the heck out. No law is legitimate that oppresses those rights, and an American government that won’t stand up for its citizens’ rights in the face of a tyranny that tramples both is craven.

Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice said:

Pastor Saeed has been left behind – betrayed by his own government.

The “deal” reached between the U.S. and Iran did not require the release of Pastor Saeed. In fact, the Administration didn’t even mention Pastor Saeed in its negotiations.

Iran gets billions of dollars in sanctions relief, and it will still enrich uranium, a key ingredient for a nuclear bomb.

Mike Evans of the Jerusalem Prayer Team noted that the Obama administration basically gave Iran– whose heads of state want to wipe Jewish people off the face of the earth– an $8 billion gift to keep working on their bombs. This puts Israelis and Americans in further danger given that some of Iran’s Islamic rulers see these countries as the Little Satan and the Great Satan, abominations that should be obliterated.

You can’t negotiate with terrorists, extremists, and megalomaniacs. This agreement is a farce and it could cost countless lives, Muslim and Christian, within Iran alone. To leave an American citizen with life-threatening medical issues in a notorious hellhole completely out of the discussion is abominable. It takes this whole tragedy a step further by turning a blind eye to the suffering of minorities like Christians within Iran.

Hormoz Shariat, who Joel Rosenberg has called the Billy Graham of Iran, also has an interesting take on the “agreement” with Iran, discussing who does and doesn’t benefit from it.

See also Iran deal doesn’t mention detained American pastor Saeed Abedini.

There ARE a couple of things you can do. First, pray. God is infinitely greater than any circumstance or power that keeps Americans imprisoned in foreign countries. Second, sign this petition on Saeed’s behalf and pass the link on. If enough of us ordinary citizens demand that one of our own be released, we can make it happen.

If this were you, you’d want your country to come for you, right or wrong. This is a fantastic opportunity to practice some empathy– standing in another person’s shoes– and take action to literally save their life. There are just over 50,000 signatures on the petition at that link– in a nation that claims to care so much about people’s rights, there should be millions upon heaping millions of signatures. Let’s do it.

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In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person’s place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity.

–C.S. Lewis

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