Ex-Iranian hostages agree with Bibi: Tehran can't be trusted

They dealt with the Iranian regime first-hand more than three decades ago, when it was founded in an act of war against the U.S., and several survivors of the hostage crisis say the idea of the U.S. negotiating with an unrepentant Tehran makes their blood boil.

For 444 days, the 52 Americans were held prisoner in the U.S. Embassy by the student revolutionaries that would help usher in the hard-line Islamic theocracy that remains in place today. Many of the hostage takers and guards held key roles in the Iranian government then and continue in important positions today.

“I think it’s very naive because the Iranians talk out both sides of their mouth,” said Clair Cortland Barnes, 69, of Leland, N.C, who was a 34-year-old communications officer at the time he was taken hostage. “Their actions betray their conversations. Their conversations say one thing and then they do something else.'

“They have an agenda that is to wipe out Israel and take over America,” he added.

The U.S., along with the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- Russia, China, United Kingdom and France -- as well as Germany, are negotiating a deal that could end international sanctions against Iran in return for assurances it will not pursue nuclear weapons. Iran’s history of disguising its pursuit of nuclear weapons, as well as its rhetoric against the U.S., Israel and the West in general, make any deal that comes from the talks suspect, said hostages.

Barnes' sentiment was shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in a speech to the U.S. Congress that he delivered against the wishes of the Obama administration, characterized Iran as the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and said the regime has "proven time and again that it cannot be trusted."

“Iran’s regime poses a great threat not only to Israel, but also to the peace of the entire world,” railed Netanyahu, who also said he does not "believe that Iran’s radical regime will change for the better after this deal.”

David Roeder, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who was attached to the U.S. Embassy when it was overrun by students seeking to overthrow the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran, said the details of the deal that have so far leaked out -- details the U.S. has not confirmed -- make it sound like Iran is being rewarded for bad behavior.

“It doesn’t seem like this is a good deal for the U.S.,” said Roeder, who is now 72 and retired in North Carolina. "It seems as if we are paying a lot of money and not getting much of a return.”

Roeder and other hostages believe they have a right to legal damages from the Iranian assets that are already being released after being frozen for years following the hostage crisis. The former hostages are represented by attorney Thomas Lankford, of Alexandria, Va.

“Most of them were tortured horribly," Lankford said of the hostages. "Even [though some were] soldiers, no war experience can prepare you for what they endured.”

Lankford said Americans who spent more than a year as captives of a regime that remains in place cannot be expected to trust it in negotiations.

“There’s a large degree of mistrust," Lankford said. "It’s hard for many of them to know what’s in those discussions.”

There is more to earning a place at the negotiating table with the U.S. and world powers than simply paying the hostages a settlement, said Donald Cooke, who was the embassy's vice consul when he was taken hostage. Iran must own up to the criminal violence in which the current regime was forged, he said.

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