The Obama Administration made a big mistake denying a visa
to Iran’s new ambassador to the United Nations, Hamid Aboutalebi. The United
States should be seeking to improve our relations with Iran so that they will
cease development of nuclear weapons and help us seek peaceful ways to clean up
the messes in Iraq, Syria and Israeli-occupied territories. Easing tensions
throughout the Middle East would free U.S. military and economic resources to
address the eroding situation in Ukraine.
But beyond these considerations of what Henry Kissinger
would call “Realpolitik,” there’s the simple fact that the U.S. government is
wrong to interfere in the affairs of another nation.
And for what? Who is Hamid Aboutalebi? Did he engage in acts
of terror funded by Mafia-like shakedowns of merchants as Menachem Begin did?
Did he work with Nazis during World War II as Anwar Sadat did?
What was the horrible thing that Aboutalebi did?
As a 22-year old, he served as translator for the group of
students who took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans
hostage for more than a year before representatives of presidential candidate
Ronald Reagan went behind the back of the duly-elected U.S. government to
negotiate the illegal arms-for-hostages deal called the Iran-Contra Affair. All
existing evidence points to the conclusion that Aboutalebi wasn’t even one of
the core cadre of students who engineered the takeover, but was called in
afterwards to provide a technical service—translation. Wikipedia reports
that Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, who helped to organize and lead the embassy takeover,
has said that Aboutalebi's involvement
was peripheral. In Asghararzadeh’s words, “Calling him a hostage-taker is
simply wrong.”
Now put yourself in the shoes of an idealistic and highly
educated 22-year-old who has conservative religious beliefs that shape your concept
of democracy and representational government. Years before, a foreign power had
helped this dictator overthrow your legally elected government. The dictator
then installed a decades-long violent reign of terror against all citizens, but
especially religious dissidents. For
decades, the foreign power provided financial and military support to prop up
this dictator. Now that your country has finally overthrown this anti-religious
monster, the foreign country is harboring him and not allowing your country to
extradite him. It would be as if a foreign country refused to extradite Hitler
to Germany or Israel. You did not
participate in the violent takeover but you are sympathetic to the cause of the
hostage-takers. And they are not asking you to carry a gun, pistol whip someone,
hold a hostage’s head under water or make them crawl naked through excrement—no,
none of the real torture that took place in the Bush II torture gulag. No, all
you have to do is use your extensive knowledge to communicate with the other
side.
Now, I’m not condoning the 1979 hostage-taking, but I do understand
why a group of Iranian young people thought they were justified in storming the
U.S. embassy.
The 444-day hostage ordeal embarrassed the United States and
made us a bit of a laughing stock. But it did not harm the United States the
way three decades of autocratic rule by Shah Mohammad Rezi Pahlavi ruined
Iranian civil life. In the vast scheme
of things, it rates far below the 9/11 attacks, the illegal bombing of Cambodia,
the forced starvation of millions of
Ukrainians known as the Holodomor or the dropping of the atomic bomb on
civilian targets.
We are currently engaged in a process of negotiations to
reduce tensions with Iran. When two enemy countries become friends, each side must
in a sense, “forgive and forget” the transgressions of the other side. We of
course should never forget, nor should we really “forgive” bad behavior. But what
we should and often do is to put the bad stuff aside and move on. Israel and
Germany are allies. We are allies with Britain, Germany and Japan, all former
enemies. Part of the process of
dissolving tensions is to let “bygones be bygones.” The idea is for Iran to deal
with us in a friendly manner despite the fact that we helped to suppress the
country for three decades and for us to deal with Iran in a friendly manner
despite the fact they embarrassed us so many years ago.
But instead of letting the sleeping dog lie, instead of
moving on, the United States prefers to put additional strain on our fragile
relationship with Iran by making a big deal about something non-violent that
Iran’s choice for UN ambassador did more than 30 years ago when he was a young
man.
It makes no sense.
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