South Asia Center Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes in the New York Times‘ Room for Debate that the United States should reconsider its decision to deny a visa to Iran’s newly appointed ambassador to the UN, Hamid Aboutalebi:
There was a sad predictability about the American reaction to reports that Iran wanted to send Hamid Aboutalebi as its next ambassador to the United Nations.
All this because the middle-aged career diplomat and former ambassador to Australia, Belgium and Italy was associated with radical students who seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and, by his own admission, on occasion served as a translator for the students, who held 52 Americans hostage in the embassy for 444 days.