By Debbie Schlussel

Thirty years ago, today, Shi’ite Muslim thugs in Iran overtook the U.S. Embassy and took Americans hostage.  Directed by Ayatollah Khomeini as their guru, they kept these blindfolded Americans hostage for 444 days, while a failed Jimmy Carter rescue attempt resulted in fallen helicopters, Americans beat the Soviets in the Semi-finals of the Lake Placid Olympics, and the Reagan Revolution began. But the Shi’ite Revolution–with far more staying power–also began.

That Was Then . . .

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Takes Americans Hostage in Tehran

Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi & Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini

This Is Now . . .

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm

& Iran-Backed Imam Hassan Qazwini, Now of Dearborn Heights, Michigan

Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi (right) w/Hezbollah Spiritual Leader Sheikh Fadlallah

Elahi & Iran’s Former Prez Khatami–Twice is Nice for Axis of Evil

Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi & Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan

Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi & Terrorist Syria’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Kuftaro(whose Fatwas allow Hezbollah & Syria’s sundry terrorists to thrive)

Taken captive on November 4, 1979, they–the hostages–missed a lot.  But while they were ultimately released, in the long term these “revolutionary” Iranian “students” succeeded in spades.  It’s not just that one of the hostage takers–the calculating loon Mahmoud Ahamadinejad–is Iran’s head honcho.  It’s that, far worse, thirty years later, the hostage-takers have friends and supporters living all over America.  And some of those key supporters have been hugged in photo ops by Presidents Bush and Obama.

A Time Magazine cover called it the “Test of Wills,” and showed photos of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Jimmy Carter.  But one is dead and the other is brain-dead and thankfully long gone from office (though he remains on American taxpayer dole while he does Ayatollah’s bidding by proxy from the grave).  It was really a test of America’s will versus Islamic thuggery of the Shi’ite variety.  And in the long-term,  their will is stronger.  Ours extremely weak, to the point that we’ve imported this thuggery to our shores and it has taken over whole American cities.

Here are just a few examples of how we willingly ceded even our own soil to the forces of Khomeini and his poisonous Shi’ism:

You need a caculator to count the number of Muslims in the Detroit are with the first name Khomeini. Guess after whom they are named? And guess to whom their allegiance is? Hint: it’s not to the U.S. And stupid, selfish Americans constantly whine to me that they really don’t want to give up the delicious shawarmeh or tabbouli at their favorite Hezbollah-financing Middle Eastern restaurant. Why take hostages anymore when they watch us doing their bidding for them?

In Dearbornistan and Dearbornistan Heights, imams who are in part funded by Iran spew hate from the podiums at their mosques.  One of those, Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi, was the imam of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Navy and a close protege of his.  Others, such as Imam Husham Al-Husainy (not his real name), have made frequent trips to Iran to take direction from the motherland and have helped Iranian-backed Shi’ites take over Iraq . .  . with OUR tax-funded blessing!  And Elahi and Imam Hassan Qazwini have both feted Hezbollah spiritual leader, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the man who ordered the murder of 300 U.S. Marines and Embassy officials in Beirut.  Presidents Bush and Obama eagerly greeted all of these men and their Justice Departments and FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials regularly pander to them at dinners and gushing town hall meetings.

Yes, our hostages came home.  But along with them, we opened our borders to some of Iran’s most dangerous propagandists and demogogues.  Imam Elahi came here on a tourist visa directly from Iran in the early 1990s.  And we let him in despite his ties to Khomeini.  Then, we granted him a green card and citizenship when he overstayed his visa, despite the fact that he repeatedly lied on immigration forms by omitting his ties to the government of Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini.  We were aware of these ties, but we didn’t care.  What a slap in the face to the Americans who spent over a year held captive by their friends.

Elahi was deliberately sent here by Iran because that government and Hezbollah felt that the Islamic Center of America, one of the largest Shi’ite mosques in the world (now headed by Qazwini) was becoming too liberal, too Americanized.  And they wanted their “sexy” radicalism back.  Elahi was sent to be the “enforcer.”  And now the enforcer has a regular, anti-Semitic, anti-American column in The Detroit Newsistan, courtesy of its disgusting editorial page editor Nolan Finley (who said he gave him a column because he has a following; so does David Duke, but no column for him).

All three of these imams–Husainy, Elahi, and Qazwini–receive funding from Iran, openly praise Hezbollah and HAMAS terrorist attacks, and have many mosque members who are involved in criminal activity related to Hezbollah, as well as immigration fraud.  Moreover, all three of these men have been feted by Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, both leading Republican candidates for Governor of Michigan.

Michigan GOP U.S. Senate Candidate Mike Bouchard w/Extremist pro-Hezbollah/HAMAS Imam Hassan Qazwini

Qazwini w/Hezbollah Spiritual Leader Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah

And there are plenty of others like these Khomeini-mentored imams . . . all of whom we welcomed to our shores with far more fanfare than the hostages who were mostly forgotten.

Then there are the Americans connected to the hostage taking.  President Carter, who ushered out the pro-American, Westernized Shah and ushered back in Ayatollah Khomeini from his exile in Paris, is now an icon of the left and the Islamic world, with his many falafel parties with HAMAS and Hezbollah, including Fadlallah, and his anti-Semitic, anti-Israel tomes.  While our hostages were in Iranian hands, Carter was flailing and clueless.  His failed attempts to rescue our hostages were half-hearted.  Had he any cojones–and he didn’t, despite his declarations to Playboy of “lust in my heart”–he’d have bombed the heck out of Tehran.  But he simply didn’t have the guts or the courage.

Instead, America was treated to a new ABC nightly countdown, “America Held Hostage, Day [insert number here],” hosted by an indignant, left-wing blowhard named Ted Koppel.  The show morphed into “Nightline.”  Yes, Ted Koppel–the biased uber-liberal–was one of the winners of the Iranian hostage-taking.  And even today, gone from ABC, he continues to get slobbering promotion from a gushing Sean Vannity on his waste of time radio show.   (That’s “conservative”?  Only if you’re a moron and a fake, both of which Sean Hannity, indeed, is.)

And what happened to the hostages?  Many of them have long since passed away.  One of them, a brave, handsome Marine named Kevin Hermening, ran for Congress in Wisconsin as a conservative Republican.  Sadly, he lost as he got little help from the Grand Old Party in his quest to defeat liberal powerhouse Congressman David Obey.  At the time, I was an intern at the Conservative Political Action Committee and helped a little on his campaign.

Yes, the winners were the hostage-takers:   Thirty years later, they got American boys to give their lives to give them a new Shi’ite satellite state in Iraq.  Let’s hear it for the American “liberators.”  And 30 years later, the hostage takers are stronger than ever.  They control Lebanon because we forced the Israelis out and left, ourselves, with our tail between our legs, after our Marines and embassy were blown to bits by their proxies.  They control Iran.  And they pretty much control Iraq.  Oh, and they control Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, Michigan, with other cities soon to come into their purview.  And they control a former U.S. President who travels the world, jet-setting to spread their propaganda.

The hostages?  They were all of us.  And we lost.  We may not see it in our everyday lives or even in this generation.  But in a future generation, the loss will be extremely painful.  And the cancer will be complete in its metastasis because we let the Ayatollah’s acolytes onto our soil to live and build a foundation of radicalism, feted and celebrated by our top federal officials.

American hostages were freed 29 years ago after they were taken 30 years ago today.  But thirty years later, we’ve welcomed the bondage and we are all hostages.

Too bad most of us are too asleep and concerned with the Octomom and Jon & Kate’s divorce to notice.