Did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s newly elected president, storm the barricades at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, seize American hostages, and then help hold them for 444 days?

Sure looks like it!

Photos from CBS and BBC archives show Ahmadinejad, or else his twin, down to his curly forelock and hairy dimple, helping to parade a blindfolded American around for a photo-op.

Ahmadinejad’s face is a little wrinkly now, but that curly forelock.... that hairy dimple above the beard.... that’s him, all right. Or maybe his twin. The only real question is, exactly how involved was he in the episode that plunged America into 444 days of yellow-ribboned national angst? Was he merely on the advisory fringe, as his aides now claim? Or was he “among them?”

Whether Ahmadinejad is or he isn’t — the real question is purely academic.

There’s little America can or should do about it.

That is, if we want the world to know our word is good.

One reason the former hostages are now able to point out their former captors and say, “I’ll never forget those eyes, full of hatred!” is that the United States actively negotiated with Iran, courtesy of Algeria, at The Hague’s Iran-US Claims Tribunal to save hostage’s lives and obtain their release. It was this negotiation, rather than the disastrously botched, failed US “rescue” operation, secretly instigated while the Carter administration righteously pontificated before the International Court of Justice, that kept the hostages alive, relatively safe, and brought them home.

What does the final accord say? Most importantly: “The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”

And that’s a promise not to be lightly broken. Does it preclude Fox News babbling? Probably not.

Of course, Tehran is not likely to be as compliant as the island nation of Aruba in permitting television to be not only judge and jury, but the police as well.

But the accord’s “indirectly” language conceivably could, and probably should, shut the mouth of any US government official from commenting on Ahmadinejad’s career as a “student activist.” Ahmadinejad’s election is definitely “Iran’s internal affair.” But the Bush administration has already disparaged Iran’s election as “in the hands of an unelected few that have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy.” And it has disparaged Iran’s leaders as “men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world.” Is this kind of “tough talk” indirect intervention? Not if Bush contents himself with pure commentary. But if he seeks to inspire others to overthrow the mullas, it comes pretty close.

One could contend Bush’s reference to “spread(ing) terror across the world” indicates that Iran’s actions have crossed the threshold from being an “internal affair” to being an international affair, and hence the accord’s strictures don’t come into play. But virtually all states consider their own foreign relations with other states to be “internal affairs.”

Can the hostages “try” Ahmadinejad by a civil lawsuit? Not if America’s word is going to mean anything in the future.

In fact, the former hostages filed lawsuits. But these suits should not go forward because the accord provides:

“[T]he United States will promptly withdraw all claims now pending against Iran before the International Court of Justice and will thereafter bar and preclude the prosecution against Iran of any pending or future claim of the United States or a United States national arising out of events occurring before the date of this Declaration [Jan. 19, 1981] related to (A) the seizure of the 52 United States nationals on Nov. 4, 1979, (B) their subsequent detention, (C) injury to the United States property or property of the United States nationals within the United States Embassy compound in Tehran after Nov. 3, 1979, and (D) injury to the United States nationals or their property as a result of popular movements in the course of the Islamic Revolution in Iran which were not an act of the Government of Iran.”

Some former hostages claim subsequent “human rights” legislation, controversially designed to allow foreign nationals to bring civil lawsuits against other foreign nationals, such as those brought against former Chilean President Gen. Augusto Pinochet, now enables the hostages to sue Iran and their former captors, and thus effectively overrules the final accord. But the accord also provides Iran and the United States have to re-submit any such disputes to arbitration, rather than to their national courts. US “investigators” now assert Ahmadinejad is not the man in the archival photos. This is likely easier — and more politically correct — than explaining why the US cannot violate its Iranian accord, especially when violating international law has become so commonplace.

A nation’s word should count for something. Even if we have to lie about it.