How do the American hostages look back on their experience in Iran today?
I’ve spoken to most of them who are still alive, and there’s a variety of ways that they feel, but they all feel bitter about the way they were treated and what happened to them in Iran. I have yet to find one who thinks there was any legitimate reason for them to be taken and held by these Iranians. They think they were dealt a tremendous injustice. Many of them are angry about the fact that the United States, in reaching the deal that ultimately led to their release, barred them from seeking any damages from Iran. At present those former hostages are pursuing a legal remedy to that in the U.S. courts, where they hope to get some sort of compensation from Iranian funds that were seized and held here in the United States after the embassy takeover. Some of the former hostages think that President Jimmy Carter should have reacted much more aggressively, even violently, to the takeover of the embassy. But most are grateful that he didn’t, because they feel that if, for instance, the resc
