American Praises Her Iranian Captives?!

Editor’s note: be sure to check out Reza Kahlili’s fascinating new book on his life as a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards while working for the CIA.

The U.S. hiker recently freed from Evin Prison in Iran, Sarah Shourd, stated in an editorial on CNN that while she was in prison, she was treated with respect and that her captors showed compassion and understanding. She recalls how a guard brought her homegrown roses twice a week and how the guard consoled her and told her that everything was going to be okay.

She then continues on about the need for improved relations between America and the current regime of Iran, blaming her 410 days of confinement on the lack of such relations. She then states “I hope our leaders find the courage to begin to break from our nations’ hostile past, just as the prison guard who brought me flowers was able to see past my nationality and recognize our common humanity.”

It is very disturbing to hear Sarah talk about her captors with such passion and with such a lack of understanding of the Islamic government of Iran. She should know that her reckless actions, along with her companions, to hike in a region filled with instability and hostility, first shows a lack of understanding of the geopolitics of the area and then she compounds this mistake by playing right into the hand of the Iranian Islamic regime’s game plan of hostage taking and bargaining with America.

Since its inception, the Islamic regime has masterfully played this game by taking hostages and then bargaining for better terms with the West, sometimes with deadly consequences. Some of the hostages were tortured and killed, including William Buckley, the CIA officer in Beirut, and others who have gone missing not to be heard of again — like Robert Levinson, the private detective and former FBI agent, who went missing while visiting Iran’s Kish Island.

During the last uprising in Iran, the world got to witness the brutality of the Islamic regime in Iran. One would expect that Sarah might have at least heard about it or one might expect that she would do a little research into human rights violations in Iran before talking so passionately about the radicals in Iran.

The roses given to her by her guard were grown in the blood of Iranian sons and daughters, who have been raped, tortured in unimaginable ways and then executed en masse in the same prison.

There is not a day that students, teachers, writers and others are not arrested by the Guards and agents of the Intelligence Ministry and taken to Evin Prison or other prisons around the country because they have spoken out against injustice and the brutal ways of the Islamic regime.

There is not a day when political prisoners are not dragged towards the noose to be hanged because they desired freedom and democracy over a Thugocracy. The regime has even gone as far as arresting the fathers and mothers of those arrested because they have objected to the treatment of their loved ones.

Sarah should be ashamed of herself. She has no right to speak for the people of Iran who are paying with their blood to free themselves from this evil regime. She should be ashamed that she is providing the kind of propaganda that the Islamic regime desires, which is to fool the people of the world about their true intentions.

Sarah should know that the roses given to her not only had the blood of tens of thousands of sons and daughters of Iran brutally killed by the regime, but also had the blood of hundreds of our heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting at the frontlines to protect freedom and democracy, and to defeat radicalism, injustice and inhumanity.

Sarah’s desperation for the freedom of her fiancé, Shane Bauer, has perhaps affected her judgment, but she should know that no matter what she does or says, the Islamic Regime in Iran will do what it wants using the other two hikers as bargaining chips for as long as they see fit.

The lesson is: One should never sidestep their principles of humanity and dignity; for bitter truth is always better than a sweet lie!