Iran Names '79 Embassy Hostage Taker as UN Ambassador

By Elizabeth Nelson

The hubris of Iran never ceases to amaze and confound me. As a thumb in the eye, to any red-blooded American, so this leaves Obama out, Iran has named Hamid Aboutalebi as its new ambassador to the U.N. and actually want him to reside in N.Y.  

While Aboutalebi served as Iran’s ambassador to Italy and Belgium, he’s most famous for being one of militants that held 52 Americans hostage in Tehran for 444 days in 1979.

Iran has applied for a visa for Aboutalebi, so he can enter the US to serve in the UN. UN requirements obligate the US to provide him with a visa.

With President Obama trying to build a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran, some would say this appointment, and the visa request, is a slap in the face of the American people.

Senator Ted Cruz is not standing idly by for this either and has made his patriotic and Constitutional position known.

Cruz has proposed a bill in the Senate that would change the wording of the statute so that the U.S. government would have broader discretion in denying a visa request. Currently, to be excluded one must ‘be a national security threat and have committed espionage.’ The bill would change the ‘and’ to an ‘or,’ giving much more latitude to U.S. officials.
Cruz made this point as a way to emphasize the problems with the current law:

"I would note, that under the existing statute, if the Taliban in Afghanistan had sent Osama bin Laden as their ambassador to the U.N., the argument would be that we’d have to accept him into New York City. Now that’s crazy."

Sadly, our country is weaker, not stronger, because of Obama's passive pansy stance on our enemies at home and abroad, so I'm sure he would have welcome Osama, to N.Y., with open arms and quipped quotes like, "human rights and national security are complementary." (Nov 2007) or "the Future Must Not Belong to Those Who Slander the Prophet of Islam"  (Sept 2012).