If a Hostage is Taken in Iran and No One Hears About It…
Shouldn’t the White House be Making a Sound?
By Mark I Posted in The White House — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
For the second night in a row, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad has paraded his latest trophy hostages on Iranian state television. Iran is holding two Americans of Iranian descent that were in Iran to promote dialogue between the west and the Iranian people. They have been accused by the regime of fomenting strife in Iran and of laying the groundwork for undermining the government of the Islamic Republic.
As in the previous night's broadcast, the program mixed footage of street demonstrations and revolutions in Eastern Europe with shots of U.S. government officials and statements by the two U.S. citizens being held, giving viewers the impression that all were connected.
Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh were again seen separately on the program, each speaking to an unidentified interviewer. Neither looked physically unwell or seemed distressed.
Toward the end of the 36-minute program, Esfandiari, who runs the Middle East program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said she had been part of group whose aim was to bring “major change” to Iran.
Tajbakhsh is an urban planner with George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
The White House has demanded the scholars’ immediate release; however, neither that demand, nor the occasion of the hostage taking itself has generated much buzz in the mainstream press. Therefore, it is incumbent on the White House to do more.
Read on…
Hat Tip: Michael Rubin at the Corner on NRO
Esfandiari has been forced to “confess”, and her coerced statement has a ring of familiarity to it, as reported by Martin Kramer in the linked piece above. Following is Esfandiari’s statement from last night’s broadcast on Iranian state television.
“It’s been close to five months that I’ve been in Iran, and I found the opportunity to think about the issues, and discussions that we had," Esfandiari said. "I [have come] to the conclusion that we (the Woodrow Wilson Center) became rings in a chain of institutions, research centers, and universities, which tried -- in the name of democracy, in the name of empowering women, in the name of dialogue -- to create networks that would cause major changes in the Iranian regime and would shake (destabilize) this system.”
Compare that to the statement given by a Canadian of Iranian decent during time he spent in prison in Iran in 2006:
“Now that I look back at my years of activities from [when I was in the] U.S. to Iran (now), I recognize that I [did] activities that served the interests of the enemies rather than the interests of Iranian people, and I regret that, and I think I have to compensate (make up for) that the best way possible…”
One wonders if these “confessions” come in a fill-in-the-blank format.
There has been precious little mention of the hostages in the mainstream press since they were taken in May. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much more mention of them from the White House, either. Searching the White House web site for anything on Iran makes that fact clear.
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow has recently launched what the White House is referring to as a “surge of facts” about the War in Iraq. The White House deems this necessary to counter improper and biased reporting in the mainstream press about that conflict. In the case of the new Iranian Hostage Crisis, the press has been almost completely silent. The president should be making more public statements on this situation, and making them more often and as forcefully as he can.
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If a Hostage is Taken in Iran and No One Hears About It… 7 Comments (0 topical, 7 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
If we wanted to do that, goodness knows Iran has given us many other reasons.
I would point out, though, and just for clarity, that this post makes no reference to precipitating hostilities. There is more the president can be doing on this, including, at a bare minimum, mentioning it once in a while.
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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman
I say we give in and do a trade. Go ahead and give them Soros.
Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. Washington Elected Elite
Dennis Kucinich.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
Like RonPaul™, but neither of them are dangerous. Leahy and Murtha are dangerous.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
and negotiate their release, or is he out of the international hostage release program?
I think at least one of them if from one of George Soros' group. I wonder if they will get goody bags when they are released?
"Up Front" he makes this observation about the devastation inflicted on Italy in 1943/44.
He says, to paraphrase, that you feel sorry for them in the way that you feel sorry for a dog killed in the road, you have to remember that it wouldn't have happened if they had stayed on the sidewalk."
I hope we get these people out. But am I willing to precipitate hostilities over *this*? No. Where did these folks think they were visiting? Cancun?
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling