Iran’s New Hostages

Iran is re-stocking its larder of American and other Western hostages, clearly convinced the Obama administration won’t dare make it an issue.

Tehran this week arrested yet another US citizen and plans to place him on trial — though on what charges, it won’t say.

Though government officials refused to confirm his name, the detainee is almost certainly Reza “Rohin” Shahini, an Iranian-American student reported missing this month while visiting his sick mother in the city of Gorgan.

He’s the third Iranian-American (on top of four dual-nationality visitors from Canada, Britain and France) taken into custody since January, when Tehran freed several US captives in exchange for Iranians imprisoned here for real crimes.

And we still don’t know the whereabouts of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, captured in Iran in 2007 and last seen in a 2010 video in which he pleaded for help.

The Obama administration didn’t include Levinson — or even information on his fate — in the January swap, which has enraged the intelligence community.

The State Department says it’s “looking into” the latest arrest, which is pretty much all it can do. Iran doesn’t recognize dual citizenship, so won’t even allow consular visits to those being held.

And Tehran knows full well by now that President Obama will never do anything that might jeopardize the nuclear deal on which he hopes to base his foreign-policy legacy.

Some analysts suggest the Revolutionary Guard is insisting on the arrests in order to deter Western businessmen from visiting Iran with investment cash. Funny: Getting such investment was supposedly Tehran’s major motive for accepting the deal’s supposedly tough restrictions on its nuclearweapons program in the first place.

Since it’s unwilling to confront Iran, all Team Obama can do now is to warn US citizens to be careful — that, and downplay yet another example of American impotence.