Supporters have seen the former Navy intelligence analyst as a martyr who was punished excessively given that he spied for a longtime U.S. ally.
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Thirty years later, Pollard, 60, has been granted parole from his life sentence by the U.S. Parole Commission, which set his release for November 21.
The decision to release Mr. Pollard comes just weeks after the Obama administration announced a historic – and deeply unpopular – Iran nuclear agreement. Israel strongly opposes the deal.
Successive US administrations have resisted calls to release Pollard, saying that his betrayal caused significant harm to US intelligence efforts.
REUTERS/Baz RatnerAn ultra-Orthodox Jewish man walks past posters calling for U.S. President Barack Obama to free Jonathan Pollard from a U.S. prison, in Jerusalem March 20, 2013.
“The move feels like a power play rather than any kind of grand gesture-an effort to dissuade Israel and its American supporters from applying maximum political pressure on the Iran deal out of gratitude-or even fear that the release could somehow be disrupted”. Whatever details he provided reportedly did not put the U.S.at any risk. “There is absolutely zero linkage between Mr. Pollard’s status and foreign policy considerations”. Had he not been granted parole, he would have been required to serve an additional 15 years in prison, the release said.
A number of Israeli officials rushed to express the hope that they would greet him on his arrival in Israel, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was cautious, stopping short of looking forward to Pollard’s arrival in a short statement he released after he spoke with Pollard’s wife, Esther. “We are grateful and delighted that our client will soon be released”, they said.
U.S. officials say the parole that’s been granted to Jonathan Pollard is not designed to ease Israel’s anger over the nuclear deal with Iran.
Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.
The Parole Commission performed a “record review” but, to our great disappointment at the time, declined to consider granting parole without first conducting an adversarial hearing, at which representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) would be present.
Pollard singled out for special thanks the National Council of Young Israel and its leaders, as well as David Nyer, Kenneth Lasson, George Leighton, Larry Dub, Nitsana Dirshan-Leitner, Effi Lahav, Asher Mivtari and Adi Ginsburg.
I think one of the quirks of the Pollard case is that, in a lot of spy cases, we will swap them for our own agents that we want back. “There was guarded waiting”. In return for his guilty plea on one count of espionage (not treason), which spared the United States from the embarrassment of a protracted and costly trial, the government agreed not to seek a life sentence. “It’s emotional for me, and I’m a lawyer”.
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MK Nachman Shai (Zionist Union), head of the Knesset lobby on Pollard’s behalf, said, “For 30 years I’ve been following this sad, ugly affair. After 30 years in the American prison, he has no significance in the relations”. “And obviously he’s very attached to Israel as well”, Lauer added.
