Iran: U.S. failure behind Ahmadinejad accusations

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran said U.S. accusations that its
President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had helped take dozens of
U.S. diplomats hostage after the 1979 Islamic revolution were
due to its failure to influence Iran and its elections.

The White House accuses Ahmadinejad of being a leader of
the radical students who stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran,
but says it is still trying to determine if he was one of the
hostage-takers that held 52 U.S. diplomats for 444 days.

Ahmadinejad, a conservative opposed to rebuilding ties with
the United States, takes over as president next week.

“Such remarks in the run-up to the transfer of power in the
Islamic Republic of Iran derive from U.S. disillusion with
Iran’s independent policies and our nation’s ignoring the White
House demand to boycott the elections,” Foreign Ministry
spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement late on Friday.

The United States says the Islamic Republic is a state
sponsor of terrorism and accuses Iran of trying to develop
nuclear weapons, charges Tehran strongly denies.

Ahmadinejad was the surprise winner of June elections which
ended eight years of reformist government in Iran. The United
States and Iranian opposition exiles called for a boycott of
the polls, but turnout was still higher than 50 percent.

Iran denies Ahmadinejad had anything to do with the seizure
of the embassy, known as the “nest of spies” in Iran.

A CIA analysis has concluded Ahmadinejad was not the man in
photographs of a hostage-taker identified by former U.S.
hostages as the newly elected Iranian leader and widely
published in U.S. media last month.

“As expressed earlier and confirmed by American sources,
the president-elect had no role in the incident at the nest of
spies,” Asefi said. “America’s enormous security bodies are
incapable of assessing simple, clear issues.”

Former hostage-takers, many of them now mellowed into
middle-aged reformists, also deny Ahmadinejad was among them.

Prominent hostage-taker Mohsen Mirdamadi, said Ahmadinejad
was one of five student leaders who met to discuss whether to
storm the U.S. embassy. But, he said, Ahmadinejad and another
man spoke out against the idea.

“They suggested taking over the Soviet embassy instead,”
the official IRNA news agency quoted Mirdamadi as saying.