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TOPICS Newstalgia

November 12, 1979 - The Hits Just Keep On Comin'!

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(November 12, 1979 - Getting a bit testy all around)

As the hostage drama continued to unfold (still at over 60 sitting in the Embassy in Tehran), Jimmy Carter started imposing sanctions on the Iranians, to not much success.

Jimmy Carter: “I am ordering that we discontinue purchasing of any oil from Iran for delivery to this country."

Making matters worse, demonstrations were popping up at college campuses all over, especially in Los Angeles, where Iranian students demonstrated in support of the hostage takers and the anti-Iranian crowd started making their presence felt.

All in all, it was clearly not going to be solved any time soon, and situations only made a bad situation worse.

And there was that added bonus of Ronald Reagan declaring his candidacy for President - to be official the next day.

Interesting coincidence, that.

Here is an excerpt of the day, as heard over KNX in Los Angeles



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Sadly, I can't imagine what on earth could motivate Americans to so strongly protect their rights. And of course, a brutal crackdown in Iran is inevitable:

An uneasy calm settled over the streets of Tehran Sunday as state media reported at least 10 more deaths in post-election unrest and said authorities arrested the daughter and four other relatives of ex-President Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran's most powerful men.

The reports brought the official death toll for a week of confrontations to at least 19. State television inside Iran said 10 were killed and 100 injured in clashes Saturday between demonstrators contesting the result of the June 12 election and police wielding truncheons, tear gas and water cannons.

Iran's regime continued to impose a blackout on the country's most serious internal conflict since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

But fresh images and allegations of brutality emerged as Iranians at home and abroad sought to shed light on a week of resistance to hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The New-York based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said scores of injured demonstrators who had sought medical treatment after Saturday's clashes were arrested by security forces at hospitals in the capital.

It said doctors had been ordered to report protest-related injuries to the authorities, and that some seriously injured protesters had sought refuge at foreign embassies in a bid to evade arrest.

"The arrest of citizens seeking care for wounds suffered at the hands of security forces when they attempted to exercise rights guaranteed under their own constitution and international law is deplorable," said Hadi Ghaemi, spokesman for the campaign, denouncing the alleged arrests as "a sign of profound disrespect by the state for the well-being of its own people."

"The government of Iran should be ashamed of itself. Right now, in front of the whole world, it is showing its violent actions," he said.

State-run Press TV reported that Rafsanjani's eldest daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, and four other family members were arrested late Saturday. It did not identify the other four. Last week, state television showed images of Hashemi, 46, speaking to hundreds of supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.