‘ Why make an agreement with people you can’t trust?’
DEAL WITH REGIME IN TEHRAN IS A MISTAKE, FORMER US EMBASSY HOSTAGES SAY
Anuclear deal between the US, Iran and other world powers has been described as a trust- building step after decades of animosity that hopefully will lead to a more comprehensive deal down the road.
But for many of the 66 Americans who were held hostage for 444 days at the start of the Iranian revolution, trusting the regime in Tehran feels like a mistake.
“It’s kind of like Jimmy Carter all over again,” said Clair Cortland Barnes, now retired and living in Leland, North Carolina, after a career at the CIA and elsewhere. He sees the negotiations now as no more effective than they were in 1979 and 1980, when he and others languished, facing mock executions and other torments.
The hostage crisis began in November of 1979 when militants stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and seized its occupants.
Foolishness
Retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer, 83, called the deal “foolishness.”
“My personal view is, I never found an Iranian leader I can trust,” he said. “I don’t think today it’s any different from when I was there. None of them, I think, can be trusted.
Why make an agreement with people you can’t trust?” Schaefer was a military attache in Iran who was among those held hostage.
He now lives in Scottsdale, with his wife of more than 60 years, Anita, who also takes a dim view of the agreement: “We are probably not very Christian- like when it comes to all this,” she said.
The weekend agreement be- tween Iran and six world powers — the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — is to temporarily halt parts of Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme and allow for more intrusive international monitoring of Iran’s facilities.
In exchange, Iran gains some modest relief from stiff economic sanctions and a pledge from US President Barack Oba- ma that no new penalties will be levied during the six months.
To be sure, the former hostages have varying views. Victor Tomseth, 72, a retired diplomat from Vienna, sees the pact as a positive first step.
Tomseth, who was a political counsellor at the embassy in Tehran in 1979, had written a diplomatic cable months before the hostage crisis warning about the difficulties of negotiation with the Iranians.
Still, he said in a phone interview on Monday that it is possible to cut a mutually beneficial deal with them.
Challenges ahead
“The challenge is Iranian society and politics is so fragmented that it’s difficult to reach a consensus,” he said — a problem that is also present in the US.
He said he considers the deal “in a category of an initial confidence measure.”
John Limbert, 70, of Arlington, who was a political officer held hostage during the crisis and later became deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran in 2009 and 2010, also supports the deal. “I would say there is a consensus among the leadership, and the consensus is, ‘ We like to stay in power. We like our palaces. ... We’ve seen the alternatives in Egypt and Tunisia,” where established regimes have been toppled, Limbert said.