Veteran UK journalist: Iran’s Ahmadinejad was 1979 hostage-taker

Iran Focus: London, Jun. 29 – A veteran British journalist said that he had interviewed the newly-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in 1979, when he was a leading activist who took over the United States embassy in Tehran, holding American diplomats hostage for 444 days.
Iran Focus

London, Jun. 29 – A veteran British journalist said that he had interviewed the newly-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in 1979, when he was a leading activist who took over the United States embassy in Tehran, holding American diplomats hostage for 444 days.

The BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson wrote in an article posted on Monday on the British broadcasting giant’s website, “Ahmadinejad was a founder of the group of young activists who swarmed over the embassy wall and held the diplomats and embassy workers hostage for 444 days”.

Prior to the presidential elections, Iran Focus wrote Ahmadinejad’s biography revealing that the former Revolutionary Guards commander became a member of the Office for Strengthening Unity following the 1979 Islamic revolution and later on planned and participated in the storming of the U.S. embassy compound.

Simpson said that as soon as he saw a picture of Ahmadinejad, he knew there was something faintly familiar about him and later reading the state-run English-language daily Tehran Times he realised that he had recorded an interview with him and other hostage-takers after the siege was over.

“He is the first non-cleric to hold the job [as President”> since Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, yet he is much more fundamentalist than either of the religious figures who have been in office since then”, Simpson added.

“Iran’s rulers are now at one in their Islamic fundamentalism”.

“Caution and tact are not qualities you immediately associate with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”, he said.