Ahmedinejad Chronic Hostage Abductor?

Now that the British hostages are released, a short analysis of the crime might be in order. It's pretty obvious that the Brit seamen were taken by Revolutionary Guard paramilitaries, you know, the type of Serbs constantly vilified as war criminals on American and Brit TV, but exempt if they're Iranian paras trying to thwart US & Brit policy. The Revolutionary Guard is an extra-governmental organization only loosely controlled by the mullahs, but very aligned with Ahmedinejad, who rose through their ranks and has the RG as his main base of support. They are only a few hundred thousand, but like the Serb paramilitaries, are ready to commit atrocities and other breaches of international law.

After the RG nabbed the Brit seamen, the reaction of the Iranian government was put in the hands of the Foreign Ministry, and the noisy diminuitive president shunted out of the limelight. My contention is that the Ayatollahs have had enough of this pint-size Hitler-wannabe and his hostage-taking ways, in this case to bolster support for his waning popularity by instigating an international incident.

It all stems from Ahmedinejad's former start in haute politique when he was one of the small band of miscreants who, after planning to kidnap Russian diplomats, suddenly switched and captured the US Embassy in 1979, leading to the demise of Carter's presidency. There is much evidence that Ahmedinejad's participation in this crime in 1979 was active and widespread. Among other evidence is testimony by half-a-dozen former US hostages.

Wish I had the link, but last night I saw Kathryn Koob, a hostage for 444 days during the Carter Administration. I studied French for three months in a small class with her once upon a time at the Foreign Service Institute. She is one of the most honest people I have ever met in the Foreign Service, which is full of careerists and snake-oil purveyors as a government bureaucracy. KK was a nice girl from Iowa who told me that books were her best friends and she was totally straightforward as I recall with no guile nor agenda.

Tonight she positively identified President Ahmedinejad as one of her captors and jailguards, recounting how this creepy short guy attacked her verbally and threatened physical harm, waving a weapon, because she and a couple of other female captives dared to bare her forearms while outside on a rare excursion to take a walk. She swears you never forget the face of a man threatening you and waving a gun.

Half a dozen other hostages have also maintained that the current president of Iran was one of the original hostage-takers, including a CIA operative trained in these sorts of things.

But Koob's testimony cinches it for me, as this religious and sincere woman would never tell a lie, and is surely not mistaken that this criminal and the president are one and the same person.

Being a former FSO, I know that State will do nothing about this, as their protection of FSOs ranges from slim to none. I also wonder why Mark Bowden didn't bring up Ahmedinejad's possible participation, if only to refute it, in his book "Guests of the Ayatollah."