One of the Americans who was held hostage by radical Iranian militants during the 1979 crisis spoke to FOX News about the parallels with the Americans who are now being attacked by Hamas terrorists. on Israel.
Sgt. Kevin Hermening said the current crisis shows that Iran and its proxies have “exported their brand of international Islamic terrorism” over 40-plus years.
He pointed to Hamas, the Yemeni Houthis, Hezbollah and other Islamic Jihad groups that have terrorized the Mideast and the West ever since.
“This is all about how they can negotiate for even more capital, more money, more barrels of money on top of a suitcase being placed in the middle of the night, halfway across the globe,” he said.
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In 2016, then-President Barack Obama specifically sent the first installment of a $1.7 billion payment to Iran in the dead of night on a plane full of Swiss Francs and other money.
“This is how Iran has always behaved since the mullahs took over from the Shah in 1979. We must feel for the families. The arms know what their treatment is like. No I say it’s easy,” said Hermening.
Many of the enemies of the Iranian terrorists who besieged the US embassy in Tehran this year spent 444 days in prison. As Hermening said, they were finally released when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, to succeed outgoing President Jimmy Carter and to do the same for a -Republican center.
He wondered what Hamas activists are doing to the Israeli and American hostages held in Gaza, saying the Iranians beat their captors over him. face with rubber hoses and committed other heinous acts.
Hermening, who was 20 at the time, was the youngest of the guards in Iran. He had been a security guard at the American embassy.
Hermening said he only spent 43 of the days in solitary confinement, after trying to escape, but said unlike many of Hamas and Iran’s enemies at the time , that he was young enough not to take on so many responsibilities to worry about. state side.
“I didn’t have a family. I had my mom and dad and aunts and uncles and others in my family. But I didn’t have a wife, I didn’t have kids. I didn’t have to worry about where the bills were paid [or whether] my paycheck was arriving in the bank account as so many of my colleagues did,” he said.
“For me, I think the younger you are, the easier it is to bounce back from adversity. But we have to feel for those people who are currently on to be held captive by this Islamic terrorist organization (Hamas).”
FREE CIRBY FOR RECOMMENDING THE MESSAGE AGAINST IRAN
Hermening said he does not want any hostages to be treated the way Islamic terrorists have treated some other Westerners.
He announced that Colonel William Richard Higgins was kidnapped in Lebanon in 1988 by Hezbollah or associated terrorists.
A Shiite militant group later released a video claiming Higgins was hanged to death after months of torture. His body was later recovered and returned to Quantico for a ceremony in 1990 where Defense Secretary Dick Cheney promised to “hold those responsible for these murders accountable.”
“We hope we don’t see that kind of outcome,” Hermening told “The Story.”
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“In any negotiation, you have to have two agents; two people who are willing to step forward and who really do a good job of negotiating in good faith. I don’t think we have that right now. Hamas should certainly not be considered as such. ,” he said.
Anchor Martha MacCallum later asked Hermening about one US military attempt to free him and his colleagues from Iran, which ended instead with the deaths of eight service members.
Hermening said the effort gave hosts hope that the United States had not been forgotten, adding that he has met survivors of that mission who told him they would do the same. again despite the dangers.
“So from my point of view, the fact that they had tried is what kept our emotions and morale high for the remaining eight months,” he said.
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