TEHRAN, 3 July 2005 — Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played no role in the 1979 seizure of hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran, close aides insisted yesterday, dismissing allegations of his involvement as a “propaganda war”.

“The people who are spreading this rumor have such a low IQ that they are comparing the alleged photo with the current status of Dr. Ahmadinejad,” Abolhassan Faqih, a senior Ahmadinejad campaign manager, told the student news agency ISNA. “But if you look at a picture of Dr. Ahmadinejad during his student years, you will see he did not even have a beard then.”

On Nov. 4, 1979, following Iran’s revolution, a group of radical student followers of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held 52 of its staff hostage for 444 days. The hostage crisis led to the suspension of diplomatic ties between Washington and Tehran, which remain severed to this day.

Ahmadinejad, a religious hard-liner, has dampened any hopes of a resumption of links, saying Iran “does not need” the United States. Following Ahmadinejad’s shock election win on June 24, former US hostages said they were sure he was a key player. The accusations have exposed the scars that remain from one of the darkest and most humiliating chapters in US diplomacy.

Any new dispute over the incoming president would further exacerbate tensions between Tehran and Washington — already high because of US accusations that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Several US newspapers on Friday published a 1979 photo of an Iranian leading one of the US hostages alongside more recent images of the Iranian leader.

Retired army Col. Charles Scott, a former hostage, told the Washington Times this week that “the new president of Iran is a terrorist.” Donald Sharer, a retired navy captain who shared a cell with Scott, remembered Ahmadinejad as “a cruel individual”.

But veteran Iranian hostage-takers have vehemently denied he played a role in the siege. Most of those who did take part have never hidden their role, and some have even gone on to hold top government posts here. And Faqih asserted that “the seizure of the Den of Spies was recognized by the late Imam (Khomeini) as a cultural revolution, and therefore if Dr. Ahmadinejad had have been there it would not have been a bad thing.

“Of course the domestic media have acted properly in this regard and the friends who were involved in the seizure of the Den of Spies denied the foreign media claims,” Faqih told ISNA. “The result of the election in Iran surprised all Westerners and they don’t know what decisions to take. Unfortunately the foreign media are now trying to spread rumors to create a psychological war.”

When contacted by AFP, close aides to Ahmadinejad also insisted that Iran’s new president was not involved in the seizing or holding of the embassy and dismissed the allegations as a “propaganda war”. “We consider this issue to be unimportant. It has already been established that Dr. Ahmadinejad was not involved, so we have absolutely nothing more to say,” said one of Ahmadinejad’s close aides, who asked not to be named.

Meanwhile, an outspoken Austrian politician has accused Ahmadinejad of aiding the 1989 assassination of a Kurdish opposition leader in Vienna, the Interior Ministry said in Vienna yesterday. But the ministry said it was not investigating the charge.

Austrian Green Party politician Peter Pilz said he had information implicating Ahmadinejad in the 1989 assassination of Iranian exile Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and two other Kurdish opposition politicians in the Austrian capital.

Several weeks ago Pilz, the Greens’ security spokesman, gave Austria’s Interior Ministry documents that he says support the allegation, said ministry spokesman Maj. Rudolf Gollia. “These documents were then forwarded to the state prosecutor’s office, and the matter is in their hands,” Gollia said. A senior aide to Ahmadinejad in Tehran said: “This is not even worth commenting on. It is like the other accusations and there will be more accusations.”