Ex-hostage advocates U.S.-Iran communication

BETHESDA, Md. — A yellow ribbon — ceramic to withstand the passage of time — hangs from the old oak tree in L. Bruce Laingen's front yard, a 30-year-old reminder of his ordeal as the highest-ranking diplomat among 52 U.S. Embassy workers held hostage in Iran for 444 days.

To Laingen, now 87, little has changed in America's relationship with Iran's autocratic regime. As the 30th anniversary of the embassy takeover approaches today, three American hikers are being held there without charges.

Laingen decries the regime's continuing failures: June's tainted elections, the brutal repression of protests and subsequent show trials.

Still, he remains as certain as he was three decades ago that engaging with Iran is the right approach for the United States.

"I've been an advocate of engagement with Iran since the hour I left," Laingen said in his suburban Bethesda home. "I meant it then, and I've said it ever since. I'm deeply grateful now that we're beginning to maybe talk to them."

To Laingen, ever the diplomat, that's not a slam on former President George W. Bush, who included Iran in his "Axis of Evil."

"He did what was possible at the time," Laingen said. "I don't believe he should have made any particular steps to acquiesce in what the Iranians were asking of us."

In Laingen's view, though, the Iranian revolution of the late Ayatollah Khomeini remains a work in progress, and the renewed stirrings of a new generation of Iranian youths present an opening that the U.S. president should encourage — from afar.

"I believe in regime change, but conducted internally, by them," Laingen said.

He remains uncertain about the widely suspected nuclear ambitions of Iran's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the controversial government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But Laingen's advice to President Obama is the same either way.

"Find a way to talk on that issue, too," Laingen said.

The intransigence of the Iranians was no surprise to Laingen, who had served previously in Iran in the 1950s, after a U.S.-aided coup brought Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power.

Three months before the 1979 embassy takeover, he warned then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance of the "overriding egoism"and "bazaar mentality"of the "Persian psyche," which, Laingen concluded, "leaves little room for understanding points of view other than one's own."

Still, he always has possessed an abiding optimism.

Memories of his captivity remain sharp. "An experience like that, of being a hostage, doesn't totally fade," he said. "It leaves a considerable impression on your psyche, your mind and your heart. But I don't live it."

The other hostages, held separately and some in solitary confinement, had it worse. "They were my people," Laingen said. "I was in charge of them. But I couldn't help them. That drove me crazy sometimes. I was angry a lot."

Boarding the plane that would fly the hostages to freedom, Laingen recalled encountering one of the senior hostage-takers. The American's parting words: "I look forward to the day your country and mine can have normal diplomatic relations."

Nearly 30 years later, he still looks forward to that day.