As discussion continues over whether Americans jailed in Iran should be considered as elements of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, Bloomberg View national security correspondent Eli Lake wrote Tuesday that doing so would embolden the Islamic Republic to take further hostages.

The families of Jason Rezaian, Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati, and Robert Levinson have stated that the nuclear negotiations make it possible that their relatives will be released soon—a prospect that could have negative long-term consequences.

As bad as it would be for President Obama to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran while four Americans remained in jail, it would also be dangerous if Iran released the Americans as part of such a deal. The U.S. government has some experience in this when it comes to Iran. As [Michael] Ledeen knows from firsthand experience, when the Reagan administration gave Israeli arms to Iran in exchange for European and American hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, it emboldened the Iranians. The deal taught them that terrorism and hostage taking can work.

The top advocate for Hekmati in Congress, Representative Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Michigan, called for a clear line in releasing the captives. “The release of Amir and the other American prisoners should be unilateral and separate of any agreement,” he said on Tuesday. “If Iran wants to be taken seriously in the global community, Iran has to realize that it cannot hold political prisoners like Amir Hekmati.”

Lake noted that Hekmati has asked not “to be a pawn in the negotiations.”

Sarah Hekmati, Amir’s sister, said in Congressional hearings Tuesday that it “does not make sense to our family how previous American prisoners in Iran have been released when the United States had no diplomatic relations with Iran and were not sitting across from them at a negotiating table, much sooner than Amir.”

Lake observed that “Rezaian, Hekmati, Abedini and Levinson today are bargaining chips for a regime that has been taking American hostages since its inception,” and that there’s no reason to “expect them to behave any differently this time around.”

Lake’s conclusion echoes the words of Hekmati himself, who termed the imprisonment of Americans by Iran to be “serial hostage taking.”

[Photo: Congressman Dan Kildee / YouTube ]