MUST TO READ - Report: Secret U.S. Iran Prisoner Exchange Revealed

Despite govt. claims that president cannot interfere in the judiciary to
free Pollard to Israel, apparently he can and does for Iran

YERUSHALAYIM -
 As part of the rapprochment between the United States and
Iran, it has emerged that the U.S. and Iran secretly negotiated a series of
prisoner exchanges, The Times of Israel has learned.

In the most significant of the exchanges to date, the U.S. in April released
a top Iranian scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, who had been arrested in 2011 for
attempting to obtain equipment that could be used in Iran’s military–nuclear
programs.

The prisoner deals and the recent agreement in Geneva to curb Iran’s nuclear
program come as a result of several years of behind-the-scenes contacts
between the two countries conducted in Oman, according to Israeli
intelligence analyst Ronen Solomon.

Iran has released three American prisoners, and the U.S. did the same.
Atarodi was the fourth.

Solomon, who has been monitoring the “unwritten prisoner-exchange deals,”
told The Times of Israel, “It’s clear what the Iranians got” with the
release of Atarodi. “What’s unclear is what the U.S. got.”

Solomon believes that before his arrest, Atarodi played a key role in Iran’s
missile and nuclear programs. Atarodi, he said, has co-authored more than 30
technical articles, mostly related to microelectric engineering, and in 2011
won the Khwarizmi Award for the design of a microchip receiver for digital
photos. “That same technology,” he said, “can be used for missile guidance
and the analysis of nuclear tests.

“There is no doubt in my mind that Atarodi came to the U.S. at the behest of
the logistics wing of the IRGC [the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps],”
Solomon said.

In response to the report on the Iranian prisoner release, Rabbi Pesach
Lerner,
executive vice president emeritus of the National Council of Young Israel
and a longtime advocate for Jonathan Pollard, noted, “When Israel has asked
the U.S. for the release of its agent, Jonathan Pollard, the Obama
administration has responded that the president does not interfere in the
decisions of the judiciary.

“Apparently that is not the case. When it wants to, the Obama administration
finds the way to interfere in the decisions of the judiciary and to release
prisoners of enemy states, both as a gesture of good will and for political
reasons.

“It would behoove the government of Israel and the American Jewish community
leadership to take note and to do what it has to do to press for the release
of Jonathan Pollard, as soon as possible.”

IMRA. via Hamodia.
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