President Trump is not the pushover that Obama was, he means business.
Americas relationship with Iran is poor at best and things just got worse. Iran has decided to sentence a US hostage to a ten year sentence for spying against Iran in hopes of delivering information to the American government. In reality the American citizen is a student merely researching Iranian history to help with his Ph. D term paper. This is completely unacceptable and President Trump has issued a grave warning that lets every country holding American citizens hostage know that they have made a HUGE mistake.
Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born American citizen, was detained in Iran in 2016 while conducting scholarly research on Iranian history as part of a Ph.D. for Princeton University. He was convicted of spying for the US government last week and sentenced to 10 years in Iranian prison.
The White House released a statement denouncing Iran for holding Wang and other Americans hostage:
“The United States condemns hostage takers and nations that continue to take hostages and detain our citizens without just cause or due process. For nearly forty years, Iran has used detentions and hostage taking as a tool of state policy, a practice that continues to this day with the recent sentencing of Xiyue Wang to ten years in prison.”
President Trump also said that Iran will face “new and serious consequences” if the country did not release the captives.