Ex-U.S. Embassy Hostage and Friend of Gov. Scott Walker Influenced Rejection of Obama’s Iran Nuclear Pact

Yesterday, on The Lisa Benson Show, I gave as an example of hope about defeating the Obama Iran nuclear executive order, the Sunday talk show comment by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who threw his hat in the ring last Monday when he declared for the Republican nomination race for President. Asked on Walker: I’d toss Iran deal on Day 1 Sunday talk show about his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, today up for a vote at the UN Security Council, said he would toss it on his first day in office, if elected President. Further, he said,

“It’s a bad deal for us, it’s a bad deal for Israel, it’s a bad deal for the world,“It’s not just the starting gun, it will accelerate the nuclear arms race,” he added. “And it is empowering Iran to do what they’re going to do.”

Last Monday during his announcement he referenced Kevin Hermening in the audience. Hermening was one of the 52 U.S. Hostages taken at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution. Hermening, a Marine guard at the time of the Embassy takeover, spent 43 days in solitary confinement. Hermening now 56 years old had befriended Walker back in the 1990s. It is through that relationship Governor Walker became well acquainted with the brutality and untrustworthiness of the Islamic regime. That relationship with Hermening enabled him to to size up the Iran nuclear deal , touted by President Obama and Democratic allies, was bad for the U.S., Israel and other allies in the Middle East. The Embassy hostages had pressed claims for compensation in federal court despite the opposition from our State Department and won. However those claims have never been honored by Tehran.

The least the Obama Administration could do is retain a portion of sanctioned funds in U.S. possession to pay the claims of the 1979 Embassy Hostages like Hermening, Gov. Walker’s friend.

				Walker: I’d toss Iran deal on Day 1 “It will accelerate the nuclear arms race,” he said.
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The AP reported on Governor Walker’s long relationship with Kevin Herminger,  Walker’s Iran view shaped by friendship with ex-US hostage

				Walker’s Iran view shaped by friendship with ex-US hosta… Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has a reason for aggressively opposing the nuclear deal with Iran — and it’s personal.
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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has a reason for aggressively opposing the nuclear deal with Iran — and it’s personal.

Neither his foreign policy adviser nor a member of his inner circle has shaped the Republican presidential candidate’s position. Walker’s deep distrust for Iran instead comes from his long friendship with one of the Americans held hostage for 444 days more than three decades ago.

[…]

As foreign policy emerges as a leading issue in the 2016 election, Walker plans to keep featuring Hermening in the campaign — a role Hermening gladly accepts.

“I don’t think the governor needed to be in the cell with me in order to understand that that’s not how you treat people, and that you shouldn’t reward people with that behavior,” Hermening said, as he described opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran in an interview with The Associated Press.

He said months of coverage of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran have stirred up emotions for him and his fellow captives, and he criticized the deal as too soft on Iran and lacking much-needed reimbursement for the 52 hostages and their families.

Politics brought Walker and Hermening together a quarter century ago.

It was either 1990 or 1991 —Hermening can’t remember which year — when a fresh-out-of-college Walker helped his unsuccessful campaign for a seat in Wisconsin’s state assembly. Their roles soon reversed. As Walker began his political ascent, Hermening stayed involved in local party politics while running a financial planning firm.

Though he calls the governor a friend, the pair only see each other once a year — if that — at party functions.

Those 444 days Hermening was held captive are still deeply personal to the 56-year-old from Wausau, Wisconsin. He’s upbeat now about even the worst parts of the experience. Even the 43 days he spent in solitary confinement “paled in comparison” to the experiences of some of the other hostages, still wrestling with their memories of their time in captivity, he said. At least one took his own life.

Before Walker’s national rise, Hermening most often shared his tale of captivity with church groups and high school history classes.

His audience may grow dramatically. Walker’s staff is still working out the details of Hermening’s involvement in the campaign, including whether he’ll be paid. But he is expected to be regularly featured.

Regardless of his role, Hermening’s story has clearly impressed Walker.

Conclusion

It is from such personal relationships that Gov. Walker has became  aware of how dangerous the Iran nuclear deal is America, Israel and the world. That likley influenced his recognition of combating the threat of radical Islamic extremism as an important policy issue  in the 2016 Election race, should he get the nod to become his party’s standard bearer. That threat was all too real to Governor Walker and all Americans by the dastardly Islamic terror attack that took the lives of five valiant Marines and a Navy petty officer at a Chattanooga Naval/Marine Recruiting Center by a 24 year old ISIS-inspired Naturalized Palestinian American citizen, gunned down by a Police SWAT team.

				Walker’s Iran view shaped by friendship with ex-US hosta…ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has a reason for aggressively opposing the nuclear deal with Iran — and it’s personal.
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