so yesterday there were various reports that mahmoud ahmadinejad, the newly elected president of iran, was involved in the 1979 takeover of the u.s. embassy. one of the former hostages thinks he was there and claims he took part in the interrogations, though ahmadinejad and acknowledged leaders of the takeover are denying it. we also have a black and white photo of some iranian hostage takers, one of whom looks like ahmadinejad. although it could just be that the guy in the photo has the same beard as the current iranian president.
i don't know whether ahmadinejad was involved or not, but it seems to me that it would be easy to find out. for years the hostage takers were considered to be heroes in iran. i have heard that their names are written on the wall of the old american embassy in tehran. indeed, quite a few of them are politicians now (the hostage takers were university students in 1979) and many are leaders of the current anti-mullah reformist movement in iran. another former hostage taker, abbas abdi, went to prison for publishing a poll showing that most iranian wanted a dialogue with the u.s.
who was or was not involved has been quite public in iran for years. as i have followed iranian politics it seems to be quite common to read about someone and have a small note about that person's role in 1979. given how open the records is on who was and was not there, it's hard for me to imagine that a politician as prominent the mayor of tehran would have been part of the hostage taking and not have it mentioned in his official biography. (what the biography does say is that he was present at the meetings that formed the student group that later took the american hostages, and that ahmadinejad proposed seizing the soviet embassy as well but he was voted down). if it turns out that ahmadinejad actually did interrogate american hostages, i wonder why it didn't come up before now like it has with virtually everyone else.
