A Little Bit of Ahmadinejad in the Night

UPDATE (12/23):  Welcome Daniel Pipes readers!  For your convenience I have uploaded the Aria article to a photo album.

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Update:  Today --November 4 -- is the 27th anniversary of that horrible day when Iranian students took America diplomats hostage at the US embassy in Tehran.   The event brought the US to its knees. President Jimmy Carter was incapacitated with indecision -- at times appearing conciliatory, at times appearing exasperated and desperate.  He was completely ineffectual, and his indecisive leadership helped the radical Islamists solidify their power over the weak interim secular Iranian government. 

For 444 days America was humiliated by a bunch of young thugs and their creepy spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini.  If you're too young to remember this low point in US history, then I suggest you pick up Mark Bowden's new book, Guests of the Ayatollah.  It is a compelling story of the men and women held hostage, the men who nobly attempted to rescue them, and an administration unprepared and woefully under-skilled to face such a challenge.

Update #2:  This Michael Rubin post over at The Corner identifies the same kind of Iran-sourced, open source information noted below.

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A translator friend of mine recently sent me a translation they did of a 1999 article from Aria, a Persian language newspaper published out of Tehran.  I thought you may find it interesting if only because it identifies Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a key co-conspirator of the '79 Iranian hostage crisis. 

I've preserved part of their comments at the beginning [NOTE:  "TC" means Translator Comment]:

On the morning of February 14, 1999 as I was taking my daily walk on the sidewalks of Pahlavi Street in northern Tehran, I stopped by one of  the News Stands when the following headline attracted my attention:   

“Details of the plan for the takeover of American Embassy in Tehran were revealed for the first time.   The names of the “nucleus” students who are the followers of Imam’s Line”.  [TC:  Imam Khomeini’s Doctrine.]   

Recently, when I moved my storage from the West Coast to [XXXX], among other things I found the original copy of one of the daily morning papers (ARIA), which I had purchase from the news stand that morning in Tehran.  Today, I decided to translate the report.

Having heard the stories of Ahmadinejad’s involvement in the infamous hostage taking I read the report again.  Unlike seven years ago, this time the name Ahmadinejad stood out.  Yes indeed, the current president of Iran was among the original five-member committee who planned the takeover of our Embassy in Tehran.

The morning paper reports that a source close to the students who follow the “Imam’s Line” told the reporter of ARIA that the proposed plan for the takeover of  the American Embassy in Tehran was first discussed at the end of the  summer of 1978.

Originally, the plan was prepared by Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, one of the leaders of the Students Movement at the Central Committee for the “Office of Growth of Unity of the Students”.   This was a newly established office for organizing the revolutionary students in the country.   Members of this committee were representatives of the students from big universities in Tehran, which consisted of the following names:

1.      Ibrahim Asgharzadeh from “Sharif Technical School”
2.      Muhsen Mirdamadi from Poly Technique
3.      Habib bitaraf from Technical College of  Tehran University
4.      Seyyedi from “University for Training of the Teachers”
5.      Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the University of Science and  Technology

After the proposed plan by Asgharzadeh, two of the members voted against it and suggested that they should occupy the Embassy of the Soviet Union instead. This disagreement was the first cause for a division in the Office of “Growth of Unity”.

A three-member committee consisting of Asgharzadeh, Mirdamadi, and Bitaraf approved the proposed plan and begun making a time table for the execution of the plan. During the period of mid to the end of October 79 they formed a 15-member committee consisting of top students from universities in Tehran to study the details for the execution of this plan.  By the third phase they had already chosen 300-350 Muslim students from different universities in Tehran and at noon time of November 4, 1979 they occupied the U.S Embassy.

[TC: Ironically, this is the birthday of the ousted Shah of Iran, an occasion which was celebrated throughout the country every year during the reign of the Monarch.]

This was the beginning of the 444 days of captivity of the American hostages by the students who followed the “Imam’s Line”, which affected the direction of the Islamic Revolution and the evolution of the political atmosphere of the region and the world. Imam Khomeini called it the second revolution.

Report indicates that the Student Organization, the followers of the “Imam’s Line” was disbanded after the hostage crisis and each of those students assumed a position in a different segment of the Revolutionary Government.

[TC:  Many of the 300-350 students who were recruited and participated in the attack on the American Embassy in Tehran mysteriously disappeared during the months and years following the takeover.]