Former hostage holds no grudge against Iranian president

A northeast Iowa woman who was held hostage in Iran 26 years ago says she believes fellow hostages who claim one of their captors has now been elected president of Iran. Kathryn Koob was one of 52 Americans taken hostage in Tehran in 1979. She’s now a part-time professor at Wartburg College in Waverly. Other hostages say Iran’s president-elect was one of the ringleaders of the hostage-taking that occurred in 1979 in Teheran. During an interview with K-C-R-G television, Koob said that past may have no bearing on the way he governs Iran. “One of the things that I did hear him say was that his government was not going to be a government of extremes,” she said. “We’ll have to see what he means by that and the only way we can know that is to wait and see.” Koob says she was never hurt during her days in captivity and she calls the episode a “sit-in that got out of hand.” Koob says her religion has taught her to forgive and forget.