Is the Iranian President one of the students who took the US Embassy

[Poiuyt]

workers hostage? I thought I heard that that story had been debunked, but Chris Matthews said it as fact tonight on Hardball and his guest did not dispute him.

[Terran1212]

1. I wouldn't blame him if he was

Just felt that is a point that is never discussed; US crimes against Iran are nonexistant in the world of cable news.

[dave502d]

6. Blame the CIA on that one. n/t

[eallen]

11. The Iranian revolution was an uprising of the religious right.

In no way did it create a more liberal nation. It's an unfortunate fact that many revolts against bad governments install equally bad governments. Get over this notion that the enemy of an enemy is a friend. Yes, the Shah's government was repressive. Yes, the CIA's overthrow of Mossadeq was both morally wrong and strategically tragic. But yes, the current Iranian government is an authoritarianism of the religious right, the kind of nightmare we can imagine here in the US only if the Christian reconstructionists manage a coup.

[eallen]

12. And Ahmadinejad is clearly a religious kook of the first order.

[Terran1212]

14. Who was justified in siezing the embassy of a country

That was helping terrorize his nation and drain its resources. A country that stole his people's sovereignty.

But as for being a religious kook well that part I'd say is also true.

[Terran1212]

13. That's not quite how I see it; I don't apologize for saying they were righ

Who later turned into religion and vengeance against the Shah's men (who numbered in the thousands)

Read Robert Fisk's The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

He was one of two western reporters in Tehran at the time of the revolution.

I met an Iranian man who told me: "The Revolution was good, but our government is bad." They dislike their government but prefer having one that at least can have Iranian-based sovereignty and not make their nation a puppet state of foreigners that was destroying the poor savagely.

Your analogy of it being solely a "religious right revolution" is, I am afraid to say, sorely lacking in my perspective.

As you say an enemy of an enemy is a friend I certainly don't see Ahmenijad as a friend but I see all the people who took over the US embassy as justified in reacting against a horrible foreign power who had virtually enslaved their nation's government. They found many documents which linked their suffering to the United States (those that weren't rush destroyed) -- they had every right to do it, and I stand by that conviction.

And Iran today is a country that I think can look back proudly on its revolution and independence, being the only independent nation (besides Syria you could say) in the Middle East that does not take orders from the West.

It has its problems, and people are fighting every day (bravely) to stop the kind of tyranny it still has, and unemployment, and apostates against human rights. But I think they can be proud of throwing off American chains and even resisting attack by a US-supported-and-armed Saddam and keeping their national integrity.

[eallen]

15. A revolution led by a religious cleric who creates a government that....

How is a revolution led by a religious cleric who creates a government that institutes one particular religious sect, whose scriptures backed by new force of law then limits personal freedom, that teaches that religion in its schools, that criminalizes sacrilege and blasphemy, and that gives ultimate judicial power over both law and who may hold office to a religious hierarchy not a revolution of the religious right?? Just what other characteristics would it have to exhibit to meet that description?

I didn't say it was solely that. No revolution is solely anything, not even solely political. Any real event like a revolution involving millions of actors includes love affairs, individuals grasping for power, personal vendettas, ethnic and group rivalries, people heroically saving others, and everything in between.

Still, the Iranian revolution was as much a revolution of the religious right as I can imagine any real event being. It was the kind of revolution that Pat Robertson and Gary Bauer could imagine for their form of protestantism only in their wildest wet dreams. And it is not something that any liberal should cheer.

[mntleo2]

2. Yes He Was

According reports I heard out of NPR as well as Air America, he was one of the hostage-takers. I wish I could tell you when I heard them, but I do remember, it was around the time he was elected that I heard that information in those places.

Cat In Seattle

[Emit]

5. No, he was not the one in the photo

I have read reports that he attended the University at the time, and that he was part of the group -- but according to other sources, he is not the one in the picture taken. See my post below for specific details.

Edited to add, by "part of the group" I mean, it was never specifically determined he was part of the "group" that actually took hostages, but that he was only possibly associated with the larger movement. I'll try to find a link to what I'm trying to say, here, for clarification.

Edited again to add, This is an example of some of the reports that I had read that claimed he was part of the larger group:

~snip~

Former Iranian president Abholhassan Bani-Sadr, who lives in exile outside Paris, told The Associated Press on Friday that Ahmadinejad "wasn't among the decision-makers but he was among those inside the Embassy."

Bani-Sadr said Ahmadinejad was responsible for briefing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on the hostage situation.

"One of his roles ... was to inform Mr. Khomeini of what was happening at the Embassy," Bani-Sadr said in a telephone interview.

Hajjarian denied those allegations as well.

Bani-Sadr said the new Iranian president was initially opposed to the hostage-taking but, according to his information, changed his mind once Khomeini gave his agreement.

~snip~

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:uEC-a36EDSYJ:www.heraldonline.com/24hour/world/story/2529994p-10909047c.html+Mahmoud+Ahmadinejad+Taqi+Mohammadi+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=21


But even this information is not well documented and remains questionable.

All in all, I think we should take all of these accusations with a grain of salt, considering what occurred pre-Iraq. Here's another excerpt that highlights much of what I had read about this situation:

The supposed AP photo that surfaced after Ahmadinejad's election victory was shopped around by Iran Focus, an anti-regime group with ties to the US Alliance for Democratic Iran, and the neo-con Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). The still photo has now been supplemented by color video footage showing the Ahmadinejad look-alike Mohammadi. Some of the ex-U.S. hostages who now claim, over 25 years later, that Ahmadinejad was one of their captors, have strong connections to GOP and conservative politics.

FDD's principal players include Newt Gingrich, James Woolsey (the friend and supporter of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress), Gary Bauer, Richard Perle, Cliff May, Zell Miller, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Tucker Carlson's father, Richard Carlson.

Perle, in turn, is a primary supporter of the Iranian exile People's Mujaheddin (Mujaheddin-e-Khalq/MEK), a group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and which operates unhindered from U.S.-occupied Iraq. The MEK and its affiliated arm, the National Council of Resistance, have now surface as the likely source of another story claiming that Ahmadinejad was an assassin sent to Vienna in 1989 to kill Kurdish opposition leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou.

This story was first shopped to a Prague paper, which claimed its source was Hossein Yazdan Panah, and Iranian Kurdish activist based in U.S.-occupied Iraq. The story was then was picked up by Austrian Green Party official Peter Pilz, who claims his source for the story is a mysterious "Witness D," an Iranian journalist based in Paris, a city known as a major operational base for the MEK. (This is very reminiscent of Ahmad Chalabi's "Curveball" source, the congenital liar and drunkard who claimed first hand knowledge of Saddam Hussein's mobile biological weapons labs, charges later proven to be fraudulent).

Ahmad Chalabi, now Iraq's Oil Minister, was a math professor at the American University in Beirut in the 1970s and, according to a longtime ABC correspondent in the Middle East, was known as SAVAK's man in Beirut. (SAVAK was the Shah of Iran's feared intelligence service some of whose members were trained by the U.S. and Israel).

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:p57W8KsZ05MJ:xiaodongpeople.blogspot.com/2005/07/diplomatic-cables.html+Taqi+Mohammadi+Mahmoud+Ahmadinejad&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=10

[bananas]

9. No, he wasn't

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad
"Other hostages, the CIA, and Ahmadinejad himself deny his involvement in the hostage crisis."

[Emit]

3. No, it has been debunked

Check this out:

http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?topic_view=threads&p=365941&t=51268

I researched this a while back, in response to a freeper I encounter periodically on another discussion board.

More here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=Taqi+Mohammadi+Mahmoud+Ahmadinejad&btnG=Search

[Poll_Blind]

4. Debunked...not even the Freepers believe it.

Place the following term into Google and you'll see what I mean: Ahmadinejad hostage debunked

The man pictured with the hostages was the late Taqi Mohammadi. And FYI, Chris Matthews is not only full of shit but sucks Tom Delay's cock when he thinks the camera's off.

PB

[Emit]

7. LOL! n/t

[benddem]

8. he's denied it

it has been debunked.

[Cleita]

10. Bush and Rummy of course want you to believe that so they can

start their war with Iran. Chris Matthews is the WH parrot. The story has been debunked but in the world of propaganda facts don't matter. What matters is that you repeat over and over what you want the people to believe.