July 1, 2005

And A Terrorist Shall Lead Them?

GatewayPundit has more information about the possibility that the new president-elect of Iran is one of the terrorists who took 52 U.S. embassy personally hostage in Tehran 26 years ago (which I first told you about here late Wednesday night). It's looking more and more likely.

More here.

UPDATE: From the first moment I heard of the possibility that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's incoming president, might have been one of the hostage-takers, I thought of author Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down, who had a recent cover story in the Atlantic Monthly for which he went to Iran and interviewed some of the hostage-takers. I wondered what he might know.

Today's San Francisco Chronicle story includes comments from Bowden:

Mark Bowden, whose book on the hostage crisis, "Guests of the Ayotollah," will be published next year, said Ahmadinejad had been a leader of the group whose members seized the embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

"He was one of the top members of the group and directly involved in decision-making,'' said Bowden, whose book is based on interviews with many of the hostages and hostage-takers. "Not so much in the supervision of hostages - - that was left to lesser lights."

He said the denials now emanating from Iran might be motivated by internal politics as well as by the international uproar.

He noted that Ahmadinejad, 49, who was elected president in a landslide vote last Friday, "very assiduously denies he was involved. Probably smartly, because it doesn't help him now that he's a national figure, and it doesn't do him any favors in dealing with the rest of the world."

Even in Iran, "being a hostage-taker is not popular anymore. My impression is that a majority of Iranians respond today to the taking of the embassy as a huge mistake that led to great problems for their country in the last 25 years," said Bowden.

As I said two days ago, the Iranian hostage crisis isn't over yet.