Some of the 66 hostages who were imprisoned in Iran for up to 444 days between 1979 and 1980 said the deal forged between Tehran and the United States doesn’t pass the smell test — and that it really hearkens back to the unstable foreign policy days of former President Jimmy Carter.
“It’s kind of like Jimmy Carter all over again,” Clair Cortland Barnes, who now lives in North Carolina, told The Associated Press. He said the deal that was forged is about as effective as talks were in 1979, when he and his fellow hostages were subjected to mock executions and other atrocities by Tehran authorities.
The hostage crisis began when radicals stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
And another former hostage called the deal “foolishness,” AP reported.
“My personal view is, I never found an Iranian leader I can trust,” retired Air Force Col. Thomas Schaefer, 83, said, in the report. “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?”
Other ex-hostages, however, aren’t so critical of the deal that takes away much of the international oversight of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and much of the sanctions on Iran’s government.
Victor Tomseth, 72, says the deal is a good initial step — “an initial confidence measure,” he said, AP reported.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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