before the release of billions of dollars of money that we have held back for sanctions, before the release now of quote, humanitarian aid directly to the iranian government, we could have had as a precondition to this the release of sayid and the other two americans that are held as hostages in iran right now. that should have been a precondition. when you ve got the head of the national security council or the deputy making the statement that this was discussed at the peripheries, at the margins, and was brought up in the staff level but not any higher is outrageous. we had the ultimate negotiating capability. the iranian sanctions that the united states government has put on the iranians have been significant enough that it brought the iranians to the table, and we blinked. the united states blinked. that s the tragedy in all this. whatever happens with the agreement, whatever one views the merits of whether the agreement was the right move for us politically or not, or geopolitical
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took sayid to a different prison. they didn t put him in a political ward. they put him in a ward where there s murderers and rapists on death row and they know there s a high violence rate there. so here they get a call and get demands from secretary of state and president obama and they do the exact opposite. they show, it s not a confidence building step. you know, our government needs t, you know, i expect them to speak out and say we asked for his release and this is horrible, what has happened. he s not going to survive even a few months in that prison. this is iran s continuous violation of human rights and here s an american citizen who is being held there because he s a christian and he needs to be released immediately. let me say what could have been done here. this is what has me troubled and i sent a letter to secretary of state kerry on friday. the fact of the matter is that
people it s a happy time of the year. for us, it s a very painful time of the year. sayid is missing from our family but not just missing, he s in this horrible, horrible prison, this new prison. he s with murderers who are on death row. we are worried about his health. he will not survive eight years if he s not if he doesn t get out of there immediately. do you have any sense of how he s doing? as you say, he has been moved to this prison you think has much worse, much more dangerous conditions. his family was able to see him not today, but previously last week, and he looked his health looked deteriorated. he looked skinnier and even from the other prison. they are very much worried about his health and his wellbeing. there is high prisoner to prisoner violence where he s at, and, you know, has a high