It came 46 years late but the families victimized by the 1979 Iran hostage crisis get to sleep a little easier now that Khamenei is boxed up for shipping.
The grabbing of American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the failed Democrat Jimmy Carter administration included two Maine residents.
A Mount Desert Island man, Moorhead Kennedy, died in 2024 at the age of 93.
“I spent my 49th birthday tied up, blindfolded, and tied to a chair,” Kennedy said in 2009.
Hostage, Richard Queen, came from Lincolnville. Queen was released early, in July 1980, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
“Iran-American relations won’t be normal for a long time, there is too much animosity,” Queen said in an interview January 20,1980, the day the remaining hostages were released. He died in 2002.
Kennedy and Queen were two of 52 American hostages taken November 4, 1979, by so-called Islamic militants while feckless Carter was in the White House.
Sixty-six people were initially seized when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was stormed. Non-American staff and several women and minority Americans were released shortly after, leaving 52 as long-term hostages.
They were held for 444 days.
Kennedy later said Carter misplayed the whole Iran situation from beginning to end, that he didn’t understand the vagaries of foreign policy in the Mideast.
“I think he totally misunderstood where he was going with Iran,” Kennedy said 30 years after he was taken hostage.
The 52 American held in Iran were released on January 20, 1981, ending 444 days of captivity. The release took place minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th U.S. President, following the inauguration ceremony.
It took a Republican 46 years later named Donald Trump to finally put a bow on this package.
While the 1979 crisis was initiated under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the guy who’s now going to meet the 72 virgins, Ali Khamenei, has consistently defended the action.
