In this episode, our host Dana interviews Michael Metrinko, a foreign service officer, Peace Corps volunteer/diplomat, and hostage during the Iran Hostage Crisis about Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and Hostage Crisis. 

Shortly before he graduated from Georgetown University in 1968 and then departed for Peace Corps training, Michael Metrinko watched the flames that erupted on the Washington horizon following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King. It was a portentous scene, signifying vast social and political change, and one that Metrinko would see again and again in his 25 years of service outside the United States. Some version of martial law, police brutality, mob violence, terrorism or bloody revolution were hallmarks of almost every place he served.

Two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey and then 3 more years with the Peace Corps in Iran prepared him for several years more years as a Foreign Service Officer in both of those countries, and he witnessed the Turkish-Cypriot War, the rise of ethnic hostility in Turkey, the heavy hand of Hafez Al -Assad’s police during an assignment to Syria, and then the frenzy and violence of events as Iran fell into revolution. He was taken to prison twice in Iran, once in Tabriz in 1979 because he had remained behind as the only U.S. official in western Iran in an effort (ultimately successful) to help 4 Americans and 4 other westerners escape from the Tabriz prison. That was followed by a return to Iranian prison later that same year in the better-known 444 days of the Hostage Crisis. Both were harsh experiences.

In the early 1980s, he was assigned to Krakow, Poland, for 3 years, and watched as the Polish Solidarity Movement crashed up against the Communist government. And then on to Israel in 1989 for 4 years as Consul General in Tel Aviv, where he closely witnessed the ongoing Palestinian intifada. And the Persian Gulf War, when Iraq’s Saddam Husseinn repeated the air attacks over Israel that Metrinko had already experienced in 1980 when Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Iran and Metrinko was in an Iranian prison under aerial bombardment.

There were, of course, some quiet times in Washington and abroad, but 9/11 changed the world. Metrinko was called out of retirement and asked to go to Kabul to help the newly opening embassy for 30 days. That “30 days” turned into more than 5 years in Afghanistan, with a series of Embassy-related and military-advisory positions that led him over much of the country. A second assignment in Yemen took him there for several months to help the Embassy in Sana’a, and the war in Iraq resulted in his two deployments into that combat zone in 2004 and 2009. And now? His focus is on helping Afghan refugee students adjust to their new lives in America.

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