his position in July 2010 to return to his teaching position at the U.S. Naval Academy. In making his decision, Limbert cited frustration with the lack of diplomatic progress made with Iran: "The Obama administration has been in office now for over a year and a half, and I think everyone thought we would be in a better place with Iran. Not necessarily that we would be friends, but that we would at least be talking to each other on a regular and civil basis." Limbert is an advisory board member at the National Iranian American Council, an Iranian-American advocacy organization that advocates for greater engagement between the U.S. and Iran. Iran In 1979, Limbert was a newly appointed Foreign Service officer posted to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran when it was overrun by Iranian students. He had arrived as a diplomat only 12 weeks before the embassy's capture. Along with 52 other Americans, he would be held captive for more than a year. Asked about how his experience as a hostage in Iran changed him, Limbert said, "I think I got a new appreciation for our own profession – that is, the profession of diplomacy. And the idea of how do you solve problems between nations and between people?" Limbert also remarked that he was wrong about the 1979 Islamic Revolution: "I admit that I called it wrong really from the beginning and in the direction that it went. The direction that it went – this rather harsh and brutal and intolerant direction that it went – certainly surprised me. I didn't expect it. Nor did I expect that we and the Iranians would remain estranged for as long as we have." Books Iran: At War with History (Westview Press, 1987). The Origins and Appearance of the Kurds in Pre-Islamic Iran, Iranian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 1968. See also List of kidnappings US-Iran relations References External links 1943 births 1970s missing person cases Ambassadors of the United States to Mauritania American expatriates in Iran American people taken hostage Formerly missing people Harvard University alumni Iran hostage crisis Living people Peace Corps volunteers Academic staff of Shiraz University United States Foreign Service personnel Writers from Washington, D.C.