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 But for many of the 66 Americans who were held hostage for 444
days at the start of the Iranian revolution, trusting the regime in
Tehran feels like a mistake.
"It's kind of like Jimmy Carter all over again," said Clair Cortland
Barnes, now retired and living in Leland, N.C., after a career at
the CIA and elsewhere. He sees the negotiations now as no more
effective than they were in 1979 and 1980, when he and others
languished, facing mock executions and other torments. The hostage
crisis began in November of 1979 when militants stormed the United
States Embassy in Tehran and seized its occupants.
Retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer, 83, called the deal
"foolishness."
"My personal view is, I never found an Iranian leader I can trust,"
he said. "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?"
Schaefer was a military attache in Iran who was among those held
hostage. He now lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., with his wife of more
than 60 years, Anita, who also takes a dim view of the agreement:
"We are probably not very Christian-like when it comes to all this,"
she said.
The weekend agreement between Iran and six world powers — the U.S.,
Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — is to temporarily halt
parts of Tehran's disputed nuclear program and allow for more
intrusive international monitoring of Iran's facilities. In
exchange, Iran gains some modest relief from stiff economic
sanctions and a pledge from Obama that no new penalties will be
levied during the six months.
To be sure, the former hostages have varying views. Victor Tomseth,
72, a retired diplomat from Vienna, Va., sees the pact as a positive
first step.
Tomseth, who was a political counselor at the embassy in Tehran in
1979, had written a diplomatic cable months before the hostage
crisis warning about the difficulties of negotiation with the
Iranians.
Still, he said in a phone interview Monday that it is possible to
cut a mutually beneficial deal with them.
"The challenge is Iranian society and politics is so fragmented that
it's difficult to reach a consensus," he said — a problem that is
also present in the U.S.
He said he considers the deal "in a category of an initial
confidence measure."
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John Limbert, 70, of Arlington, who was a political officer held
hostage during the crisis and later became deputy assistant
secretary of state for Iran in 2009 and 2010, also supports the
deal. He said he does not view it in terms of whether Iran can be
trusted, but whether the regime recognizes that a deal is in their
own interest.
"I would say there is a consensus among the leadership, and the
consensus is, 'We like to stay in power. We like our palaces. ...
We've seen the alternatives in Egypt and Tunisia," where established
regimes have been toppled, Limbert said.
He said it's a mistake to be overly pessimistic about the prospects
for a deal.
"If we and the Iranians could never agree, then Victor and I and all
our colleagues would still be in Tehran," he said. "The problem has
been that our reality has been for the last 34 years that anything
the other side proposed, you could never accept because by
definition it had to be bad for us, because otherwise why would they
propose it?"
For other hostages, though, their experience has led them to the
conclusion that attempting to negotiate and expecting Iran to live
up to its end of the bargain is a losing proposition. Sgt. Rodney
"Rocky" Sickmann, 56, of St. Louis, then a Marine sergeant,
remembers clearly being told by his captors that their goal was to
use the hostages to humiliate the American government, and he
suspects this interim deal is in that vein.
"It just hurts. We negotiated for 444 days and not one time did they
agree to anything ... and here they beg for us to negotiate and we
do," he said. "It's hard to swallow. We negotiate with our enemies
and stab our allies in the back. That doesn't seem good."
The deal may also have a direct effect on some of the hostages who
have long fought to sue the Iranian government for damages. The new
agreement calls for $4.2 billion in frozen Iranian assets to be
released, which could make it more difficult to collect a judgment
on any successful suit.
"And what do we get out of it?" asked Barnes. "A lie saying, 'We're
not going to make plutonium.' It's a win-win for them and it's a
lose-lose for us." [Associated
Press; MATTHEW BARAKAT]
Associated Press writer
Gene Johnson contributed to this report from Seattle.
Copyright 2013 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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