Monday night’s arrest of suspected Times Square bomber [Muslim] Faisal Shahzad is proof that the world’s jihadists are still targeting the U.S. The bombing attempt is also a timely reminder that all the talk about the war on terror being over is nonsense. Astute police work foiled last year’s plot to bomb New York’s subway, as it did similar planned attacks against a New York synagogue and a Dallas skyscraper. But it was only luck that saved the passengers aboard Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. The reality is that plots against the U.S. continue to be hatched and inspired in [Islamic] places like Pakistan and Yemen.

Nov. 4, 2009, marks the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, when militant Iranian students took 66 Americans hostage and began a 444-day standoff with the West. Fifty-two Americans were kept in captivity for nearly 15 months by forces loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who established an Islamic theocracy in 1979, months before the storming of the embassy.

President Jimmy Carter ordered an ill-fated rescue attempt in April 1980 in which eight U.S. servicemen died in a mid-air collision between two aircraft flying over the Iranian desert on their way back from the aborted maneuver. The failure left a lasting mark on the Carter administration and helped sink his presidency.

Iran released the hostages on Jan. 20, 1981, 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan assumed office in Washington. The 52 embassy officials were flown from Iran to Algiers, then on to a U.S. airbase in Germany to recover. From there they flew to Newburgh, N.Y., and were bused to West Point, receiving a heroes’ welcome on U.S. soil.

On June 29, 2005, shortly after the depraved Jew-hater Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the Iranian presidential election, several major news outlets publicized allegations that he participated in the 1979–1981 Iran Hostage Crisis.

Some previous hostages have identified Ahmadinejad as the man in the military jacket on the hostage’s left side in the photo below. Several other sources, including Ahmadinejad, and other hostage takers have disputed these identifications.