Iran has now formally complained to the United Nations over the US refusal of a visa for Hamid Aboutalebi, Tehran’s new ambassador to the United Nations. The dispute offers a chance to at last resolve a festering sore in US-Iran relations — the hostage affair.
Washington refused the visa because Aboutalebi has been identified as one of the “students” who occupied the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, holding its diplomats hostage for 444 days.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to pursue the matter as a symbol of “resistance to the American Great Satan.” Washington should welcome Tehran’s complaint — and demand that the Khomeinist leadership explain its position on the episode.
After all, 52 US public servants suffered for over a year from an act regarded as a crime under both the Iranian penal code and international law. And the issue goes far beyond Aboutalebi.
Thirty-four years after the event, Tehran’s leaders should tell the American public and the international community, whether they regard the attack as a criminal act and, if so, whether they’re prepared to apologize for it.
After all, a string of US officials, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and John Kerry, have apologized for unspecified “wrongs” that the United States has supposedly done to the mullahs.
On the Iranian side, however, the hostage-taking has always been hailed as “an act of Islamic courage.”
The Aboutalebi affair provides an excellent chance to cauterize a wound that has affected Tehran-Washington relations for three decades.
In response to Tehran’s complaint, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should appoint a commission, acceptable to both Tehran and Washington, to prepare a report.
The next step must come from Tehran with a solemn apology, expressing regret about the raid and pledging to respect international law and diplomatic practice. The individual hostage-takers who now occupy senior government positions should issue separate apologies.
Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, leader of the 15 “students” who initiated the raid, says he’s ready to offer his personal apology, provided Rouhani does so on behalf of the Islamic Republic.
The Khomeinist regime must abandon the claim that, since international law was developed by the “Infidel,” the Islamic regime need not always respect it.
Of the 15 “students” who started the drama in November 1979, 12 are still alive.
One, Mrs. Massoumeh Ebtekar, is a vice president in Rouhani’s administration. Another is Rouhani’s defense minister, Hussein Dehqan. A third is Rouhani’s chief strategic guru, Saeed Hajjarian.
Aboutalebi only joined later, although it’s not clear in what capacity. He claims that he was just a translator — unlikely, since in 1979 he knew no foreign languages. He learned some French a decade later when he went to Belgium to attend university.
However, he’s right in claiming that he was a small fry. After the first few weeks of the drama, hundreds of “students” arrived at the seized embassy to offer their services, including Iran’s foreign minister, Seyyed Muhammad-Javad Zarif. “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, then deputy defense minister, also visited the occupied embassy to praise the hostage-takers as “heroes of Islam.”
By the time the embassy drama had ended, over 500 “students” had become involved for various lengths of time and in various capacities. The 400 or so still alive provide the backbone of the Khomeinist regime as members of parliament, as ministers, ambassadors, provincial governors and directors of public corporations.
None of the individuals mentioned above have expressed the slightest regret, let alone offered an apology. Rouhani has made numerous speeches at the embassy site, re-named “Nest of Spies,” praising the hostage-holders as “the true children of Islam.”
Because President Jimmy Carter did not at first treat the embassy raid seriously, the mullahs concluded that they were above the law. Their minions held many other foreign diplomats hostage for varying lengths of time, among them French Ambassador Guy Georgie. Over the decades, Khomeinist “students” have raided the embassies of Canada, Italy, South Korea, Germany and, more recently, Great Britain.
The holding of foreign hostages, especially Americans, became part of Khomeinist political culture. Since 1979, hardly a year has passed without the mullahs holding Western hostages. Today, Tehran is holding three US hostages.
It’s time, at long last, for a change — starting with some apologies.