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Irans mullahs must be jealous of all the attention Kim Jong-un got after the death of US college student Otto Warmbier shortly after Pyongyang returned him from North Korean captivity.

Last week, after all, their kangaroo courts slapped a 10-year prison sentence on another US student, Xiyue Wang, whos pursing a doctorate at Princeton. Tehran claims Wang, a Chinese American, is a US spy who took 4,500 pictures of Iranian documents.

Wang joins four other US citizens held hostage in Iran. Baquer and Siamak Namazi, an 80-year-old father and son, are being held in the countrys notorious Evin prison, along with art-gallery owner Karan Vafadari. Robert Levinson, an ex-FBI agent who disappeared in 2007, is also believed to be an Iranian hostage.

Wangs sentencing may be an escalation of Irans hostage war against the United States. As Michael Rubin noted last week, the mullahs usually target Americans with Iranian passports. But Wang may not have had one because hes not an Iranian citizen and is believed to have been traveling on an Iran-issued visa.

That may mean the Islamic Republic is crossing lines even they have long avoided, says Rubin.

The move on top of Irans violations of the 2015 nuclear deal, attacks on US ships in international waters, fueling wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, support for terrorism and missile tests raises a key question: Will President Trump do anything about any of this?

Just last week, he re-certified that Iran is in compliance with the nuke deal. Uh, whats up with that?

Several reports suggest Trump OKd re-certification only reluctantly and is set to change course soon. Its also true that its only been six months since he took office; his team is expected to complete a policy review on Iran this summer.

But the clock is ticking and Trump is being tested. As James Carafano, a one-time Trump foreign-affairs adviser, notes, Our friends and allies clearly need to see where were going.

Unless Trump moves fast, Wang wont be the last of Irans US victims.

Originally posted here:
Iran ratchets up its US hostage-taking game - New York Post