The death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is deeply personal for a Brooklyn native.<\/p>\n
Barry Rosen, an East New York native, was taken hostage inside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 by Khomeini’s followers.<\/p>\n
A photo shows Rosen\u2019s first moments of freedom after being held captive for 444 days. He survived mock executions, isolation and torture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are moments in my life right now that remind me very much of what captivity meant to me,\u201d Rosen said.<\/p>\n
Rosen first went to Iran in 1967 with the Peace Corps.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy experience in Iran was overwhelmingly positive. Iranian people are very friendly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He later returned as a press attach\u00e9 at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. That\u2019s when he was captured during the Iran hostage crisis. Nearly five decades later, Rosen said he was struck by the timing of the news that Khamenei had died.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis all occurred on my birthday, yesterday, my 82nd birthday,\u201d Rosen said. \u201cI think the death of Ali Khamenei absolutely is positive, but there is no way that this is the end of the Islamic Republic. There is a system there in Iran where there\u2019ll be a replacement and the regime will continue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosen said the Iranian people do not deserve the regime currently in power, but he worries the death of its top leader may not bring sweeping change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would tell those Iranians who are living within their homes and care about the change in the system to keep that going, but be careful,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what will be happening in the near future. This could go on for a long time and I think only when we see a defection in the regime will I feel confident that these Iranians in Tehran and all over Iran will have an opportunity to change the system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is deeply personal for a Brooklyn native. Barry Rosen,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,98,8372,3595,14670,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-149405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-brooklyn","10":"tag-east-new-york","11":"tag-hostage","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-the-bronx","17":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","18":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}