President Donald Trump warned Iran on Saturday that if it retaliated against the U.S. for killing Gen. Qassem Suleimani it would come to deeply regret it.
“Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge,” Trump wrote. “Let this serve as a warning that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago).”
In making such bellicose threats, Trump has reopened deep-seated wounds from the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81.
Trump’s tweet also amplified feelings of anxiety for many Iranian Americans who had already been struggling to understand what the rise in tensions mean for their loved ones back in Iran.
Even though four decades have passed since Iranian protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took the Americans hostage, resulting in a 444-day ordeal, those wounds continue to haunt Americans. The crisis is viewed by many as a watershed moment that reshaped U.S.-Iran relations. The two countries cut off formal diplomatic relations in 1980.
For some survivors of the hostage crisis, the flaring of tensions and drumbeat of war in the days after the storming of the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad by pro-Iranian militia members and their supporters have stirred emotions in ways that they said they haven’t experienced in many years.
“The moment I heard it happened I couldn’t help but flash back to what happened to us,” said Mark J. Lijek of Anacortes, one of six Americans who managed to evade capture and take refuge at the Canadian Embassy.
Still, not all surviving members of the hostage crisis agree that the U.S. stands to benefit from Trump’s assassination of Suleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force, which carries out the foreign operations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, melding intelligence work with a military strategy of nurturing proxy forces across the world.
William J. Daugherty, a 72-year-old former CIA case officer who lives in Georgia, said he doesn’t believe Iran’s proxy war capability has taken a hit because of Suleimani’s death.
“Suleimani has already been replaced,” Daugherty said. “I’m not sure killing him will have any positive result.”
For Lijek, the images from Baghdad of pro-Iranian militia fighters and their supporters storming the walls of the U.S. Embassy compound and setting a guardhouse on fire reminded him of the fateful morning of Nov. 4, 1979, when, as a 29-year-old foreign service officer, he watched Iranian protesters storm the 27-acre compound that surrounded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
“It put me back in that mind-set … especially the first couple hours when you don’t know what’s happening.”
Days later, when news broke that the U.S. took out Suleimani, Lijek wasn’t surprised by Trump’s strong response.
“Part of me says: You don’t miss a chance to get someone like him,” he said of the general.
