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The 40th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis… — 18 Comments

  1. Omri Ceren, twitter:

    “It was entirely predictable that eventually Iran would go back to enriching uranium at their Fordow nuclear bunker, which they dug out of the side of a mountain so they could build nuclear weapons” — @SenTedCruz, @LindseyGrahamSC, & @RepLizCheney

    Sen. Ted Cruz, twitter:

    Read @LindseyGrahamSC, @RepLizCheney’s & my joint statement on Iran’s announcement that it will begin injecting uranium gas into centrifuges at the Fordow nuclear bunker, which the Nuclear Archives seized by Israel identify as part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program here [see Screencap at link — sdferr]

  2. Everybody talks about Vietnam but isn’t Iran just as big, if not bigger, a failure on the part of our foreign policy elites?

    Mike

  3. A friend of mine fled Iran in the 50s, opposing the Shah. He came to the US and went to medical school with me. Before the Revolution, but after finishing his orthopedic surgery residency, he decided he wanted his parents in Tehran to meet his American wife and children. They all flew to Tehran and, when they arrived at the Tehran airport, the SAVAK took him aside into a private room. He was told he had two choices. He could get on a plane to New York or he could serve his one year in the Iranian army. If the latter, they could visit his parents. He chose to stay and, during his year as an oil field doctor, he learned to play golf on the sandy course where they carried a square of Astroturf to hit the ball from.
    He still plays golf.
    The SAVAK was nothing like the IRG.

  4. Tablet Magazine, Eliora Katz: THE REVOLT AGAINST IRAN

    Across the Middle East, from Baghdad to Beirut, the citizens of countries thought to be part of Iran’s axis of influence have begun to revolt against Tehran. In the face of brutal crackdowns, millions of Iraqi and Lebanese protesters, in movements led by Shiite Muslims that defy reductive sectarian narratives, have erupted in revolt against the corruption and failure of their governments and Iran’s domination over their national politics.

    In early October, predominantly Shiite youth took to the streets in Iraq calling for their government’s resignation, and chanting slogans like: “Out, out Iran, Baghdad remains free!” Iraqi protests have a long list of grievances over the Baghdad government’s failure to deliver a “peace dividend” of stability and prosperity given the country’s oil wealth, that was finally supposed to arrive after the major campaigns to defeat ISIS ended last year. But as demonstrations have spread across Iraq and led to violent confrontations with government security forces, the protests have also become more pointed in their anger at Iran and its domination of Iraqi politics leading to the public burning of portraits of Iran’s supreme leader and the torching of offices linked to Iran-aligned paramilitary groups.

    Iraqis have good reason to hold Tehran responsible for their problems at home. In Iraq’s last elections, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)—a consortium of Iran-aligned militias institutionalized in 2016 by the Iraqi parliament—emerged as kingmakers, while Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, negotiated the arrangement that put the current parliament speaker, president, and prime minister in power. The day after the recent protests in Iraq began, Suleimani flew to Baghdad to head a meeting with security officials. Soon after Suleimani’s visit, the PMF deployed snipers in a brutal crackdown against Iraqi protestors.

  5. 55.4 ? Questioner: Am I to understand then— just the fact that the third-density entity on this planet, just the fact that he calls or bids an Orion Crusader is a polarizing type of action that affects both entities?

    Ra: I am Ra. This is incorrect. The calling mechanism is not congruent in the slightest degree with the bidding mechanism. In the calling, the entity which calls is a suppliant neophyte asking for aid in negative understanding, if you may excuse this misnomer. The Orion response increases its negative polarity as it is disseminating the negative philosophy, thereby enslaving or bidding the entity calling.

    There are instances, however, when the contact becomes a contest which is prototypical of negativity. In this contest, the caller will attempt, not to ask for aid, but to demand results. Since the third-density negatively oriented harvestable entity has at its disposal an incarnative experiential nexus and since Orion Crusaders are, in a great extent, bound by the first distortion in order to progress, the Orion entity is vulnerable to such bidding if properly done. In this case, the third-density entity becomes master and the Orion Crusader becomes entrapped and can be bid. This is rare. However, when it has occurred, the Orion entity or social memory complex involved has experienced loss of negative polarity in proportion to the strength of the bidding third-density entity.

    11.15 ? Questioner: Is it impossible for you to tell us precisely how he does this service?

    Ra: I am Ra. It is possible for us to speak to this query. However, we use any chance we may have to reiterate the basic understanding/learning that all beings serve the Creator.

    The one you speak of as Genghis Khan, at present, is incarnate in a physical light body which has the work of disseminating material of thought control to those who are what you may call crusaders. He is, as you would term this entity, a shipping clerk.

    11.16 ? Questioner: What do the crusaders do?

    Ra: I am Ra. The crusaders move in their chariots to conquer planetary mind/body/spirit social complexes before they reach the stage of achieving social memory.

    11.18 ? Questioner: Then we have crusaders from Orion coming to this planet for mind control purposes. How do they do this?

    Ra: As all, they follow the Law of One observing free will. Contact is made with those who call. Those then upon the planetary sphere act much as do you to disseminate the attitudes and philosophy of their particular understanding of the Law of One which is service to self. These become the elite. Through these, the attempt begins to create a condition whereby the remainder of the planetary entities are enslaved by their own free will.

    11.19 ? Questioner: Can you name any of the recipients of the crusaders’— that is, any names that may be known on the planet today?

    Ra: I am Ra. I am desirous of being in nonviolation of the free will distortion. To name those involved in the future of your space/time is to infringe; thus, we withhold this information. We request your contemplation of the fruits of the actions of those entities whom you may observe enjoying the distortion towards power. In this way you may discern for yourself this information. We shall not interfere with the, shall we say, planetary game. It is not central to the harvest.

    11.20 ? Questioner: How do the crusaders pass on their concepts to the incarnate individuals on Earth?

    Ra: I am Ra. There are two main ways, just as there are two main ways of, shall we say, polarizing towards service to others. There are those mind/body/spirit complexes upon your plane who do exercises and perform disciplines in order to seek contact with sources of information and power leading to the opening of the gate to intelligent infinity. There are others whose vibratory complex is such that this gateway is opened and contact with total service to self with its primal distortion of manipulation of others is then afforded with little or no difficulty, no training, and no control.

    11.21 ? Questioner: What type of information is passed on from the crusaders to these people?

    Ra: I am Ra. The Orion group passes on information concerning the Law of One with the orientation of service to self. The information can become technical just as some in the Confederation, in attempts to aid this planet in service to others, have provided what you would call technical information. The technology provided by this group is in the form of various means of control or manipulation of others to serve the self.

    11.31 ? Questioner: I don’t know if this is a short question or not, so we can save it till next time, but my only question is why the crusaders from Orion do this. What is their ultimate objective? This is probably too long to answer.

    Ra: I am Ra. This is not too long to answer. To serve the self is to serve all. The service of the self, when seen in this perspective, requires an ever-expanding use of the energies of others for manipulation to the benefit of the self with distortion towards power.

    If there are further queries to more fully explicate this subject we shall be with you again.- From the Law of One message by Ra.

    https://www.lawofone.info/results.php?q=crusader

    Iran has greatly polarized and achieved totalitarian power. Their methods of power and might is easy to see.

  6. I still enjoy the film, “300,” adapted from the Frank Miller graphic novel on the Battle of Thermopylae between the Spartans and the Persians (Iranians).

    The film received ample criticism for making the Persians look bad, but that was a feature, not a bug, for me. No less than Victor Davis Hanson wrote the forward to a reissue of the graphic novel:

    The movie does demonstrate real affinity with Herodotus in two areas. First, it captures the martial ethos of the Spartan state, the notion that the sum total of a man’s life, the ultimate arbiter of all success or failure, is how well he fought on the battlefield, especially when it becomes clear at last that bravery cannot prevent defeat. And second, the Greeks, if we can believe Simonides, Aeschylus, and Herodotus, saw Thermopylae as a “clash of civilizations” that set Eastern centralism and collective serfdom against the idea of the free citizen of an autonomous polis.

    –Victor Davis Hanson
    https://www.city-journal.org/html/your-shield-or-it-9420.html

  7. Considering the zealous over-regimentation of Spartan life, they weren’t exactly what most of us would call “free citizens,” but I take your point.

    “the Shah declined the assassination offer, arguing that this would make him a martyr.”

    But a dead martyr might not have wreaked the havoc that the living tyrant accomplished.

  8. Neo, I had quite a few friends, other doctors, who had fled Iran during the Shah’s rule. They were young men and opposed the monarchy. The only one I knew who went back is my friend. We see each other still and he attended my 80th birthday party. He married a nurse named Dixie (of all things) during his orthopedic residency. They live in Pasadena, CA.

  9. Freedom House has a scoring system to rate regimes by their injuries to civil liberties and political participation. Iran in 1977 received a score that put it at the median of the bloc of countries in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia. (There were lurid tales at the time about the SAVAK, but you have to wonder if they were largely urban legends, or at least tales of woe which were quite prevalent in that part of the world). One of the Shah’s last prime ministers, Gen. Golam Reza Azhari, supposedly told American officials at the end of 1978, “The Shah cannot make up his mind, and for that reason the country is lost”.

  10. I remember being at Stanford, not knowing too much about the Iran situation, but hearing the anti-Shah protests in ’78 ish.

    I did NOT like the SAVAK, nor the Pinochet secret police of Chile. But in Chile I thought the socialists were worse, and suspected that in Iran the alternative would be worse.

    The pro-human rights democrats plus the elite socialists plus the communists plus the Ayatollah Islamists were enough, thru protests, to get the Shah gone. Then the commies, socialists, and democrats were purged, leaving the Ayatollah. Far worse than the Shah.

  11. I was working in Argentina at the time of the hostage crisis. Coincidentally, a week before the November 4, 1979 takeover, an Iranian employee of the company flew down from Houston for some equipment repair. An Argentine woman asked him about the new theocracy being installed in Iran. His reply was that if that was what the Iranian people wanted, that was their choice to make. I never saw him again. I doubt he returned to Iran.

    In 1978, an Iranian gave me ride when I was hitching around Houston. He told me about a protest against the Shah. I also suspect that he never returned to Iran.

  12. I used to interview applicants to UC, Irvine medical school. I met some very interesting young people. One was a young man from Iran who had served in an Iranian army aid station during the war with Iraq. He got interested in medicine and lost any enthusiasm for the regime, as twin results. He immigrated to the US where he had a brother working in San Jose CA. He got a job working nights at Sun Microsystems and went to junior college, then San Jose State during the day. His work ethic was off the charts, He was worried about bias against Iranians but I reassured him. I never learned if he was admitted. Some of the full time faculty had odd ideas about who should be medical students,

  13. Neo’s comments about revolutions consuming their own reminded me of General Raul Baduel of Venezuela. He was one of Hugo Chavez’s closest friends and allies. He was Minister of Defense. It was Baduel who, in 2002 after Chavez had resigned, reinstalled Chavez in the presidency after the Opposition made a political mess of taking over the government.

    In 2007 he publically questioned Chavez’s Constitutional Referendum. After that Baduel slowly broke ranks with Chavez as he became uncontrollably megalomaniacal. In 2008, Baduel wrote his own Swan Song in the form of an Editorial that was published in the press. In this editorial he had the temerity to say that it was possible to discuss distribution of wealth, but that before wealth could be distributed it must first be produced.

    Shortly after that, he was arrested on corruption charges. He remains in prison (without trial) to this day.

  14. *** Neo Alert ***

    Neo – Given your expertise on the art of dance – I’m soliciting your comments on Gia Kourlas review in the NYT re: Sean Spicer’s performance on DWTS.

    Do you agree with Ms. Kourlas that Spicer’s green shirt was “scary” ?

    Do you agree that Spicer exhibited a “cold brutality” ?

    Thanks in advance for your assessment.

  15. Roy Nathanson:
    Neo’s comments about revolutions consuming their own reminded me of General Raul Baduel of Venezuela. He was one of Hugo Chavez’s closest friends and allies.

    Good point. Here is an earlier example of another General breaking with Hugo Chávez. When Chávez campaigned for President in 1998, one of his main talking points was a crackdown on corruption. General Urdaneta made the mistake in 2000, of taking Hugo Chávez at his word. From Rory Carroll’s Comandante: Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.

    With the rain clouds finally dissolved in early 2000, the Ávila, with its new topography, was once again visible from the palace terrace…… His longtime comrade and fellow coup conspirator General Jesús Urdaneta was unhappy. Chávez had appointed his friend, typically blunt and outspoken like people from the western state of Zulia, to head DISIP, the intelligence service. Urdaneta received reports that two of the president’s most important civilian allies, Luis Miquilena, head of the National Assembly, and José Vicente Rangel, the foreign minister, were lining their pockets. Both were veteran political operators who had guided the comandante, a political neophyte, after his release from jail on the hidden strings between state, media, and business interests in the so-called Fourth Republic. Urdaneta complained to Chávez that they were bringing the old, corrupt habits into the fledgling Fifth Republic. According to the general, the president acknowledged the duo’s corruption but said he needed their dark arts to consolidate power. The feud spilled into the Vargas aftermath when security forces were accused of executing looters. Of eight thousand men in the field, only sixty were from DISIP, but Urdaneta found his agency singled out and pilloried—allegedly due to Miquilena and Vicente Rangel pulling their invisible strings. (Years later Miquilena fell out with Chávez and was charged but acquitted of corruption. Vicente Rangel was never charged with any crime.) Chávez barred Urdaneta from speaking to the press. His old friend claimed he had been set up and resigned in protest, the revolution’s first major defection.

    BTW, Rory Carroll works for The Guardian. Not all lefty journalists are fact-free ideologues. This is an excellent book.

  16. But there’s very little doubt about the identity of another former hostage-taker who’s riding high at present: Hussein Sheikholeslam, recently an Iranian diplomat and legislator.

    When I was working on Gulf Coast rigs at a time when the Shah was still in power, fellow employees told me of their former supervisor, an Iranian named “Sheikoslami” – phonetic spelling. He was, they told me, very competent and also not afraid to disagree on technical matters with HIS superiors- and also to be later be proven right in those disagreements. (Before getting on the ‘copter one week for days off, he left a prediction on the cafeteria chalkboard about the depth at which the well would blow out. He was proven correct.) Some years later, I was laid off and in grad school. “Sheikoslami” was in one of my classes, and also employed with another company- at a substantial raise in salary.

    I wonder if petroleum engineer “Sheikoslami” was related to hostage-taker and diplomat Hussein Sheikholeslam.

  17. I well remember the hostage crisis. I was a freshman in college when it began, and as I recall it was 444 days interrupted by the death of John Lennon. And the weather sucked and the economy was awful. And when they finally settled the hostage issue Nightline continued by covering Reagan’s shooting. Bad times, amigos.

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