The fate of America’s 52 hostages seized on Nov. 4, 1979, and held for 444 days in Iran riveted the nation and dominated news coverage. President Donald Trump cited the “violent takeover” of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in announcing the U.S. and Israel’s attacks on Iran.

As a young reporter, I interviewed many of the hostages for a Tribune story marking the second anniversary of the embassy seizure. After their safe return in early 1981 and several months of freedom, most just wanted to get on with their lives.

But some, like Victor Tomseth, deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Tehran at the time of the takeover, discussed the lingering hate and bitterness the hostages felt toward their captors as Iran’s revolution-torn republic descended into anarchy and murder. 

“I think during the initial phases afterwards, I did get angry, and I thought about how to get back. ‘Don’t get mad, get even,’” Tomseth told me. He was 40 then and a 15-year Foreign Service veteran who had been in Iran longer than all the other captives. 

“But after a while, it became apparent that the damage that Iran and Iranians were doing to themselves was far more than certainly I personally or even the United States would ever choose to inflict upon them.”

With Trump’s full-scale, unprovoked attack on the Islamic Republic entering its fourth week, that is no longer such a clear case. History will judge the wisdom or folly of Trump’s decision to launch another war of choice against a Mideast foe with no exit strategy.

Tomseth, however, who is now 84, retired and living in Virginia, has already seen enough to conclude that “the international consequences, including reverberations across the global economy, of U.S. and Israeli actions in Iran, have only begun to manifest themselves, but they are likely to be profound and long-lasting.

“Given Trump’s track record, there is every possibility that he soon will claim victory in Iran and call it a day in that theater,” Tomseth told me in a recent online exchange. “But he will leave behind an Iranian regime even more hostile to U.S. interests than it has been for nearly the last half century, a region deeply traumatized by the war experience, a global community highly skeptical of the value of U.S. leadership in international affairs, and depleted U.S. stocks of war materiel that might well be needed at a moment’s notice to deal with the emergence of other crises around the world.”

From an early stint in the Peace Corps in Nepal to a long and distinguished career in the Foreign Service, Tomseth has long memories and more experience than most to make that assessment.

Revenge aside, the Pandora’s box of violence, killing and destabilization unleashed across the Middle East by this war has left former U.S. hostages such as Tomseth troubled by the unintended consequences that spread like a wildfire around the region.

Other former hostages have expressed similar skepticism about Trump’s latest war, some calling it “absolutely insane” and “moronic” due to the damage it has already done and the likelihood it won’t dislodge Iran’s theocratic regime but only make it more dangerous.

To be sure, few freedom-loving people are sorry to see Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gone. The world is better off without him, but at what cost? He has reportedly been succeeded in that role by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who may be worse.

While Trump maintains that only he had the courage to go after the Iranian regime that for almost half a century has spread terror and calls for “Death to America,” the attack is proving so far to be likely another global blunder by a reckless president. Trump didn’t heed the warnings of dangers that other presidents before him cautiously assessed and wisely avoided for decades. 

The American military is the best in the world, but deploying that awesome power and risking those lives should be the last resort of a president, not the go-to move. It’s one that Trump should explain clearly to the people first. It was Trump who promised peace during his campaign, and yet he has attacked eight countries in 15 months. The repercussions of this war are likely to be the most risky and far-reaching.

Trump’s Operation Epic Fury has expanded to a dozen countries in the region, and an estimated 2,000 people have died since it began Feb. 28. Thirteen U.S. servicemen and women have been killed, and some 200 have been injured. Well over 1,000 Iranians have been killed, including more than 150 at a girls’ school it appears the U.S. mistakenly bombed. 

“The U.S.-Israeli military coalition clearly has degraded extensively Iran’s military capabilities, but just as obviously it has not eliminated its capacity to strike Israel and other regional neighbors,” Tomseth observed. “What lessons will those who have been attacked by Iran take away from this experience?”

Oil tankers have been set aflame by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, which has now effectively closed it to almost all tanker traffic as the Trump administration scrambles to clean up another mess of its own creation, with no mandate from most Americans, the United Nations or NATO allies.

In 2018, Trump carelessly pulled out of President Barack Obama’s 2015 agreement committing Iran not to have a nuclear weapon, and that essentially freed Iran to seek one again. Then, Trump launched attacks on Iran twice in the last year in the middle of negotiations — in part, to clean up that earlier fiasco he created. Why should Iran’s leaders, what’s left of them, trust the president?

“Iran now certainly has every incentive to resume enrichment, including to weapons grade, as soon as it is able following a cessation of hostilities,” Tomseth said.

Most unfortunate, perhaps, are the consequences for the Iranian people, whom Trump promised to help after Khamenei’s regime murdered thousands protesting for change.

“Decapitation of the Islamic Republic regime has not opened the door to a popular overthrow of the regime,” Tomseth said. “Those Iranians opposed to the regime are no more united in their view of how to accomplish this, let alone organized to do so, than they were before the war began. And the regime itself is almost certainly more determined than ever to use whatever force necessary to crush any and all dissent.”

Storer H. Rowley is a former national editor and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. He was the Tribune’s Middle East Bureau chief from 1994 to 1998.

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