Memories That Still Hold US Hostage: Reflections On A Visit To The Former Embattled US Embassy in Tehran

Memories That Still Hold US Hostage: Reflections On A Visit To The Former Embattled US Embassy in Tehran

By Danny Schechter
Global Research
Published: November 29, 2010

The latest massive Wikileaks revelations released Sunday show how the US and its allies have been covertly discussing military attacks and covert actions against Iran. If history is any judge, this doesn’t always work out the way Washington wants as Danny Schechter recounts in this report on a recent visit to the former US Embassy in Tehran, Iran, known locally then as a “spy nest.”

Tehran, Iran: The building was smaller than I remembered. The fading images in my mind were grainy: angry crowds, students marching, flags burning, chants of “Death to America,” and Americans diplomats in blindfolds, It became a soap opera: Ted Koppel started his rise in TV News with ABC’s nightly “America Held Hostage” series, the forerunner to “Nightline.”

Back then, I was in radio news, just transitioning into TV. I remember publicly debating about what we should do with a DJ friend who had turned from a Vietnam War peacenik into a bomb Iran hawk.

In Iran, the takeover of the US Embassy—what students called its “conquering”-- was justified as a blow against imperialism, the seizure of a “spy nest.” It was, at the time, the most globally covered aspect of the Iranian Revolution, an audacious confrontation between people power and a foreign power.

The events that followed may have been considered revolutionary in Iran, but for progressive Americans they became the nail in President Jimmy Carter’s political coffin. He angered Iranians first when he toasted the Shah calling him a beloved figure. He then tried and failed to negotiate through third parties and later sent in a military ‘rescue” operation that crashed and burned leading to his own downfall.

The Iranians held him responsible for sheltering the ailing Shah; he in turn was being pressured by the likes of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger to shelter the fleeing Monarch.

Continued. . .