As the families of Americans celebrate the release of their loved ones held in Iran, the authorities in Tehran said they would not be freeing a businessman arrested in October and were silent on the fate of a former FBI agent who disappeared in the country.

It was unclear why Siamak Namazi, 44, an Iranian American based in Dubai, was arrested in October while visiting a friend in Tehran, where he had done consultant work over the previous decade. Namazi is the son of a prominent family in Tehran who couldn't be reached. Namazi immigrated to the United States in 1983, and he returned to Iran when graduating from college to serve in the Iranian military.

“I don't know what's going on,” said Ahmad Kiarostami, a friend. “I'm still hopeful he's going to be released in the next few days. That's what I hope.”

Kiarostami said he had traded Facebook messages with Namazi's family in Iran, but they didn't know anything.

He said it was a “big surprise” when Namazi wasn't freed with the others.

Officials said that they would continue to talk with Iran to secure the release of Namazi as well as to obtain information about the whereabouts of Robert Levinson, 67, who went missing on an Iranian island in March 2007.

News that Levinson had not been freed left his family distraught.

“Of course, we are happy for those families, but angry and devastated,” Suzanne Halpin, the sister of Levinson's wife, said in an email.

The Levinsons have hoped for years that their father would eventually be released after a deal was reached to limit the Iranian nuclear program.

The family thought the United States had “squandered its best opportunity for leverage in ensuring my father's safe return home,” Levinson's son, Daniel, wrote last year in The Washington Post, after Iran and six world powers struck a nuclear deal.

“They were given every opportunity to save face,” an intelligence official said Saturday. “We are still not giving up.”

The Iranians have never acknowledged holding Levinson, and former and current intelligence officials fear that he might be dead.

“Discussions with the Iranians have focused on trying to discern his whereabouts and bring him home,” said a senior administration official, speaking on anonymity guidelines.

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