Bernie Sanders backed a party that supported Iran during hostage crisis
Pulley often condemned “[US President Jimmy] Carter’s war drive against the Iranian people,” claiming the US “was on the brink of war with Iran.”
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFDemocratic Presidential candidate U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT)(photo credit: REUTERS/MARK MAKELA)
In April 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over Iran; months later 52 American diplomats and citizens, as well as citizens of other nations, were kidnapped and held hostage for 444 days in the US Embassy in Tehran.While a majority of Americans stood firmly for the hostages and against their kidnappers, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a self-proclaimed Trotskyist revolutionary party, took the opposite position and insisted that the hostages were CIA agents, according to theIn 1977, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders left the tiny left-wing Liberty Union Party of Vermont that he’d co-founded and began to align himself with the SWP in 1980, serving as their presidential elector in Vermont, advocating for the party’s candidates who ran on a platform that defended Iran’s keeping the hostages, the website reported. At a rally, SWP’s presidential candidate Andrew Pulley condemned “anti-Iranian hysteria around the US hostages.”Pulley often condemned “[US President Jimmy] Carter’s war drive against the Iranian people,” claiming that the US “was on the brink of war with Iran,” according to the Daily Beast. He also said that the war’s aim would be “to protect the oil and banking interests of the Rockefellers and other billionaires.”On May 21, 1981, Sanders spoke at a Pulley rally saying: “For the last 40 years the Socialist Workers Party has… been harassed, informed upon, had their offices broken into, had members of their party fired from their jobs, and have been treated with cold contempt by the United States government,” the report said.The Sanders campaign did not respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.After US President Donald Trump ordered a strike to take out Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commander Qasem Soleimani, Sanders spoke out against it."Trump's dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars,” Sanders wrote in a statement.Sanders has also spoken out in favor of the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). At a debate on Tuesday, Sanders said “We have got to undo what Trump did – bring that coalition together and make sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.” According to Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), the Democratic presidential hopeful believes that rejoining the deal is a way of not escalating tensions beyond the nuclear issue.
