Here is yet another indication that the Iranians aren’t “moderate” at all, but are reveling in their victory over Barack Obama and John Kerry, and are well aware that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that they can do or say that will bring Obama and Kerry and Co. to reconsider their abject capitulation to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“Iran Names 1979 U.S. Embassy Hostage-Taker Its UN Envoy,” by Kambiz Foroohar for Bloomberg, March 29 (thanks to Kenneth):
Iran has named a member of the militant group that held 52 Americans hostage in Tehran for 444 days to be its next ambassador to the United Nations.
The Iranian government has applied for a U.S. visa for Hamid Aboutalebi, Iran’s former ambassador to Belgium and Italy, who was a member of the Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line, a group of radical students that seized the U.S. embassy on Nov. 4, 1979. Imam was an honorific used for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution.
Relations between the Islamic Republic and the U.S. and its allies are beginning to emerge from the deep freeze that began when the self-proclaimed Iranian students overrun the embassy and took the hostages. The State Department hasn’t responded to the visa application, according to an Iranian diplomat.
A controversy over Aboutalebi’s appointment could spark demands on Capitol Hill and beyond during this congressional election year for the Obama administration to take the unusual step of denying a visa to an official posted to the UN. It also could hamper progress toward a comprehensive agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program, which the U.S. and five other world powers are seeking to negotiate with Iran by July 20.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani chose Aboutalebi to serve at the UN, which is headquartered in New York City on international, soil after the interim nuclear deal was forged last Nov. 24.
Compensation Issue
“There’ll not be any rapprochement with Iran until hostages are compensated for their torture,” said Tom Lankford, an Alexandria, Virginia-based lawyer who’s been trying to win compensation for the hostages since 2000. “It’s important that no state sponsor of terror can avoid paying for acts of terror.”
Anyone connected with the hostage-takers shouldn’t get a U.S. visa, said a former hostage and U.S. diplomat. He requested anonymity to avoid renewed attention.
Aboutalebi has said he didn’t take part in the initial occupation of the embassy, and acted as translator and negotiator, according to an interview he gave to the Khabaronline news website in Iran.
“On a few other occasions, when they needed to translate something in relation with their contacts with other countries, I translated their material into English or French,” Aboutalebi said, according to Khabaronline. “I did the translation during a press conference when the female and black staffers of the embassy were released, and it was purely based on humanitarian motivations.”
He referred to the release of some embassy staff members during the first few weeks of the crisis in November 1979.
Photo Displayed
Although Aboutalebi downplays his involvement, his photograph is displayed on Taskhir, the website of the Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line. Taskhir can mean both capture and occupation in Persian.
According to Mohammad Hashemi, one of the students who led the occupation of the embassy, Iran’s revolutionary government sent Aboutalebi and Abbas Abdi, another architect of the occupation, as emissaries to Algiers. The Algerian capital at that time was a mecca of third-world liberation movements, including the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Hamid Babaei, a spokesman for the Iran’s UN Mission in New York, declined to comment.
“We don’t as a matter of practice comment on visa applications.” said Marie Harf, deputy State Department spokeswoman. “People are free to apply,” and the U.S. has a process to review all visas, she said.
Asked if the U.S. is aware that Aboutalebi was a member of the hostage-taking group, Harf declined to comment.
No Speculation
“Anyone can submit a visa application, and it will be evaluated as we do all visa applications, in accordance with our procedures,” she said. “We don’t speculate on what the outcome might be.”
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir decided not to attend last year’s General Assembly session after not receiving a response to his visa application from the State Department. Bashir is subject to outstanding arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and referral for trial in The Hague. While the U.S. isn’t a party to the ICC, the court has asked American authorities to surrender Bashir if he enters U.S. territory.
Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin accused the U.S. of denying a visa for Abkhazia’s then-foreign minister Sergei Shamba in 2007, when he sought to attend a Security Council meeting. Then-National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack, now a vice president of Chicago-based Boeing Co. (BA), said Shamba withdrew his visa request before the U.S. made a decision on his application.
Not Recognized
The U.S. doesn’t recognize Abkhazia as an independent territory because it broke away from Georgia in 2008.
Some U.S. foes have received visas in the past, said Gary Sick, the top Iran expert on President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council staff during the hostage crisis.
“All kinds of leaders from Cuba to Africa who could be accused of horrible crimes and opposing U.S. policies have received visas,” Sick said. “There is no way to know why some people get the visa and some don’t.”
Some of the students who took the hostages formed the backbone of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, according to the book “Guests of the Ayatollah,” by Mark Bowden.
Others have had extended political careers. Masoumeh Ebtekar, a former spokeswoman for the hostage-takers, is a vice president in Iran under Rouhani and head of the Department of Environment.
Others fell out of favor amid shifting political developments in Iran. Abdi, one of the first to enter the embassy compound, became the editor of reformist newspaper Salaam, which was shut down in 1999. He was sentenced to five years in prison in 2003, and released in 2005.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kambiz Foroohar in New York at kforoohar@bloomberg.net
jewdog says
We should hold up his visa application for 444 days.
umbra says
No, 444 years.
Kepha says
In the name of diplomatic reciprocity, we should give him a visa, and warn him that he will be subject to arrest and legal process for kidnapping and terrorism the minute he steps onto US soil–diplomatic status or no.
Perhaps we should issue this public statement:
The US government feels obliged to explain its decision to arrest Hamid Aboutalebi of the Islamic Republic of Iran on his arrival in the USA–especially since Mr. Aboutaalebi is to be accredited to the United Nations, and it has been long-standing American policy and practice to accommodate emissaries to the world body.
Mr. Aboutalebi has been identified as one of the hostage takers at the American Embassy in Teheran in 1979. Hence, we regard his posting to the UN as a calculated insult to the United States, and a mockery of the traditional meaning of diplomacy.
For as long as humans have engaged in statecraft, the persons of ambassadors and diplomats have been sacrosanct. Hence, in 1941, after declarations of war against the former governments of Japan and Germany following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US government was scrupulous in allowing Japanese and German diplomts to leave the USA in safety. This was because we believed that sooner or later, war would end and ordinary diplomacy would resume.
In taking the US Embassy staff hostage following the revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran declared expressly that hostility towards the United States was so great that US diplomatic personnel deserved none of the traditional considerations extended to emissaries. While the USA officially apologized for prior US policies against which the Islamic Republic objected, the Islamic Republic of Iran has not issued any apology for its treatment of our diplomatic personnel. By appointing one active in Students Following the Line of the Imam, the chief hostage-taking group, to diplomatic service inside the United States, the US considers that Mr. Aboutalebi’s appointment constitutes continued evidence of Iran’s disregard for dipomatic nicety, and will thus reciprocate by treating Mr. Abutalebi as a common criminal once he sets foot on US soil or inside US territorial waters or airspace.
dumbledoresarmy says
Good one, Kepha.
Send that to ACT for America: it might give them some inspiration for campaigning on this issue.
Inchoate says
Vehemently disagree with granting this Iranian “person” any type of United States visa under any circumstances at any time.
Particularly this bit:
“In the name of diplomatic reciprocity, we should give him a visa, and warn him that he will be subject to arrest and legal process for kidnapping and terrorism the minute he steps onto US soil–diplomatic status or no.”
Where was this stuffy “diplomatic reciprocity” when these Muslim-Iranians stormed into our “diplomatic premises” and created such bloody mayhem?
Moreover, Holder’s Justice Department would create a mockery of a trial which would be gleefully used as an anti USA propaganda vehicle by the likes of the C.A.I.R.; also the A.C.L.U. would try to find a thread or two with which to insert their strident whelps if they could find the least pretense, Iranian citizen or not, United Nations or not.
Simply put, we Americans would be made fools of.
These oh-so-pretentious 19th cent. teacup-striped-pants “diplomatic conventions” are long, long out out of place, having been exploded along with the Japanese bombs dropped on Hawaii in 1941. Anyone recall those pictures of the prim Kurusu and the suspicious Cordell Hull just before that attack?
Anybody even remember the famously furious Cordell Hull? Anybody even recall that name?
” Diplomatic reciprocity” here be damned.
mortimer says
Hamid Aboutalebi should be arrested and charged upon arrival in the United States. Then tried for his role, fined and incarcerated to the extent of the law, then removed from the United States permanently.
Inchoate says
This Iranian shouldn’t be given the opportunity to arrive in the United States under the pretext of assuming any sort of “diplomatic” position with the United Nations.
This would only re-enforce the very mockery which the United Nations has become, merely an anti-United States forum enabled by the preposterous top-heavy financing of the United States’ dues.
Our “convention”-al World has been upended by our Muslim enemy. They simply aren’t wired the same way as non-Muslims. We must abandon the formal “convention”-al approach to Muslim terrorism and fight them on their terms, not those of the Marquess of Queensbury.
Muslims laugh at our “conventions”.
Brian Hoff says
Well he will get the visa as we needed than agreement with Iran on they nuclear program which is for peaceful use.
Inchoate says
Ha Ha.
The tragi-comedy we’re dealing with here is really the multi-sided hypocrisy and blatant in-yer-face-infidel! spiced with chutzpah [love that most expressive word in Muslim contexts] all so skillfully applied by these Iranians by this sly move to appoint a hostage taker as …..pause for emphasis…..a troublemaking post at the “Nations United Against America”, an auditorium filled with smirking diplomatic busy-bodies with their “immunities”.
Indeed, we Americans should immunize ourselves against this malady. Good luck with that, obviously. At least we should stop our financing of these enemy-groupies of ours.
Now, add in this noxious stew the likes of the hollow Susan Rice, social climber Kerry, chameleon Obama, and the hapless joker Hagel and the gettin’-even Holder, and we have the perfect storm of a hot air mix to the great satisfaction of these Muslim Iranians and their humming centrifuges.
And, a smart-ass claque of media writers egging all of this on.
I throw up my hands. I’ve never seen such politically correct, at the same time such pretentious incompetents in positions of such dangerous responsibility. We’re being laughed at, ridiculed.
gravenimage says
“Brian Hoff” wrote:
Well he will get the visa as we needed than (sic) agreement with Iran on they (sic) nuclear program which is for peaceful use.
………………………..
Note “DefenderofIslam’s” logic—that we will need to pretend that this thug is a “diplomat” in order for us to continue to believe Iran’s lies that their nuclear program is peaceful.
And yet, our current dhimmi appeasement is such that “DefenderofIslam” is probably correct that this is not only how things will go, but the “logic” that will be applied to the madness.
We in the free West are in a great deal of trouble…
ApolloSpeaks says
THIS IS ANOTHER INDICATION
of just how intent Iran is in Carterizing Obama-who incidently was elected President on the 29th anniversary of the Iran Hostage Crisis.
judith roth says
Has the world gone TOTALLY mad??
Paul Brown says
Yes, the world is mad.
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.