Iran's new president was a member of the hardline Islamic student group that seized the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, but he opposed the takeover -- preferring instead to target the Soviet embassy, friends and former hostage-takers said on Thursday.
The former students who carried out the seizure and held the Americans for 444 days said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had no role in taking the embassy or guarding the hostages.
In the turbulent early days of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad was more concerned with putting down leftists and communists at universities than striking at Americans, they said. During the long standoff, he was writing and speaking against leftist students, they said.
Six former US hostages who saw the president-elect in photos or on television said they believe Ahmadinejad was among the hostage-takers. One said he was interrogated by Ahmadinejad.
The White House said on Thursday that it was taking their statements seriously. US President George W. Bush said "many questions" were raised by the allegations.
The flap could add another layer of mistrust between the US and the former Tehran mayor, who was elected president last week with the backing of some of the most hardline members of the Islamic regime.
Leaders of the radical Islamic student group that carried out the Nov. 4, 1979, takeover of the embassy said Ahmadinejad was not among the hostage-takers.
"He was not part of us. He played no role in the seizure," Abbas Abdi, one of six leaders of the group, said.
Mohsen Mirdamadi, leader of the students who swept into the embassy, also said Ahmadinejad was not involved.
Abdi and Mirdamadi are now leading proponents of reform that would support democratic changes and are at loggerheads with Ahmadinejad.
Mohammad Ali Sayed Nejad, a friend of the president-elect, said he and Ahmadinejad unsuccessfully argued in favor of seizing the Soviet embassy at the time, and Ahmadinejad told colleagues in a recent meeting he opposed targeting the US mission because it would bring international condemnation down on Iran.
"I believed that if we did that, the world would swallow us," he said, according to his aide Meisan Rowhani.
Ahmadinejad dropped his opposition to the US embassy takeover after the revolution's leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, expressed support for it, but he never participated, Rowhani said.
Rasool Nafisi, a Middle East analyst who studies conservative groups in Iran, said Ahmadinejad may have frequented the embassy as one of the thousands of the students who camped out or were involved in protests there.
Former US hostage David Roeder and others said that after seeing Ahmadinejad on television, they were certain he was one of the hostage-takers.
"I can absolutely guarantee you he was not only one of the hostage-takers, he was present at my personal interrogation," Roeder said, though he added, "It's sort of more mannerisms."
William Daugherty and Don Sharer, two other hostages, said they believe Ahmadinejad is shown in photos taken a few days after the embassy was seized.
Abdi and several other former hostage-takers were shown the same photos and said they did not think the man was Ahmadinejad.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development