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A Jewish diplomat tells his story in PBS documentary about the Iran hostage crisis
(New York Jewish Week) — After a “traditional, religious” Jewish childhood in Brooklyn where he attended yeshiva, Barry Rosen fell in love with Iran.
Rosen was 22 when he joined the Peace Corps and set out on a two-year stint in Iran in 1967. There, Rosen felt deeply connected to the people and culture of the country — he loved the food, the clothing, the language, and the sights, sounds and smells.
“I was told by members of the Peace Corps that Jewish kids did very well in Iran,” Rosen says at the beginning of “Taken Hostage: The Making of an American Enemy,” a new two-part documentary on PBS that explores America’s role in the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979. “I felt to a certain degree that there was a warmth there that I could see in my own family. There was a sense of kinship that I felt for Iranians.”
Twelve years after first arriving in Iran, however, Rosen, would become one of the 52 hostages attached to the American embassy in Tehran who were held by Iranian college students for 14 terrifying, pivotal months. When he returned as a press attaché for the US Embassy in 1979, the country he loved was on its way to becoming the oppressive religious republic it is today.
That year, its citizens staged a revolution and overthrew the corrupt, American-backed shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, to make way for Ayatollah Khomeini, the Muslim cleric and “supreme leader.”
In November, 1979, students took control of the American embassy and demanded the shah return from exile to be tried for his crimes. Pahlavi, who had always maintained strong relations with the United States, was in New York for cancer treatment.
Barry and Barbara Rosen have spent the last four decades reliving the trauma of their experience while also advocating for hostages worldwide. (Frankie Alduino)
“It’s a story of perseverance,” Rosen told the New York Jewish Week in a Zoom interview from his apartment in Morningside Heights. “You look back and you say, ‘oh my God was that me? Was that us?’ It was so long ago but also the pain of it is very self-evident and it is still near in many ways.”
As a hostage in Iran, Rosen faced mock executions, days in complete darkness — what he calls “modern state-sponsored terrorism.”
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, his wife Barbara Rosen found herself at the center of media attention as she advocated for her husband’s release. She and their two young children, Alexander and Ariana, woke up every morning to an onslaught of press ready to exploit her every move, though she had no information about Barry or the situation in Iran.
“It is part of my DNA. I feel personally responsible [to tell my story],” Barry said, sitting beside Barbara. “I was the first member of this honorary group of hostages taken by Iran and I feel that we owe every hostage something so that they can escape that horror.”
“Taken Hostage” tracks America’s connection with the politically volatile Iran, beginning with a 1953 coup d’etat to depose Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, organized in part by the CIA. The shah consolidated power, modernized the country and maintained strong relationships with the West, especially the administration of President Jimmy Carter, but maintained a fearsome and dictatorial reputation among the citizens of Iran.
The documentary traces the story of the revolution and the establishment of power by Khomeini, who undid the Westernization of the previous decades and declared the country the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Along with Rosen, the documentary features Gary Sick, who was a member of the National Security Council at the time and discusses what it was like to navigate the hostage crisis from inside the White House. Foreign correspondents Hilary Brown and Carole Jerome describe risking their lives to report on the crisis from Tehran.
Rosen was one of three Jewish hostages, and though Barbara did not publicize his Judaism out of fear for his safety, American synagogues and Jewish organizations managed to send him mail.
After a year in captivity, Rosen appeared to the public via broadcast and wished his family a Happy Hanukkah. “I really wanted to make sure the American Jewish community knew that I was safe,” he said.
The hostages were released on the day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration on Jan, 20, 1981. The settlement unfroze nearly $8 billion of Iranian assets, terminated lawsuits Iran faced in America, and forced a pledge by the United States that the country would never again intervene in Iran’s internal affairs.
Barbara and Barry Rosen at a welcome parade in New York City. (Courtesy Barry Rosen)
Returning stateside was complicated for Rosen, who suffered from PTSD and had to separate his love for Iran from the experience of what had happened to him.
What was waiting for Rosen was “a huge outpouring of love and support from everyday people in the United States,” he said. “I think that was the most joyful part of it. There’s no doubt about it that everybody in the United States thought they knew me. At least in New York, it seemed as if American New Yorkers looked at me as a New Yorker who went through the pain. So I think that was a tremendously helpful and healing thing.”
Both Rosens were disappointed with the behavior of the United States. “It was an embarrassment of the foreign policy establishment. They wanted to wipe it out immediately,” Barry recalled. “They never held Iran accountable for what it did.”
“There was so much that each of the people needed to do to heal, and then after a year, there was never any follow up on any kind of medical or psychological investigation,” Barbara said. “We were both very disappointed in our own government and the way we were treated.”
Barry went on to a career in research and education — he conducted a fellowship at Columbia University doing research on Iranian novelists, served as the assistant to the president of Brooklyn College, and eventually was named the executive director of external affairs at Teachers College at Columbia.
The Rosens, who now have four grandchildren, wrote a book about that period in their lives.
“Personally, I don’t like going back and thinking about it or reflecting on this. It wasn’t a very happy time. It was a difficult time in my life,” Barbara told the New York Jewish Week.
But the documentary, the Rosens said, manages to tell the story of the crisis while reminding viewers how deeply personal it was for those involved. It’s a lesson the Rosens have taken with them as they watched and experienced similar crises over the last few decades, from the war in Ukraine to unrest in Iran over the death in September of a woman who was detained for breaking the hijab law.
“All history is a personal event. Each thing that happens is happening to people,” Barbara said. “It was a story of people being plucked out of their normal jobs, their diplomatic life, the security of just feeling that you’re safe. All of a sudden, you’ve lost all of that. You’re tied up in a chair for a month and not allowed to speak to somebody. Families here had no idea what’s happening to their loved ones in Iran.”
“It’s easier for human beings to think about the abstract issue rather than the personal issue. Get into personal issues, people start to walk away, they feel uncomfortable,” Barry added.
Despite everything, Barry still feels an attachment to the culture and people of Iran that he experienced in his early twenties, calling himself a “child of divorce” between the United States and its former ally, a relationship that he said he doesn’t see improving in his lifetime.
He also continues to tell his story because of his lifelong work with hostage victims around the world. Currently, there are three American hostages and more than a dozen international hostages in Iran. Barry works with Amnesty International, Hostage USA and Hostage Aid Worldwide to advocate for their release.
“I want to make certain that the American government and the American people stand by all those who were taken by Iran and all governments that take hostages, whether it’s China, Russia, Venezuela — but for me, especially Iran,” he said. “I say this because I really feel the need to make this an important issue. The American public needs to understand this very well. People’s lives are being taken away.”
“Taken Hostage,” an “American Experience” documentary, will air on PBS in two parts on Nov. 14 and 15. The film is also available to stream on pbs.org.
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If Iran Won’t Deal, Trump Must Make the Cost of Refusal Unbearable
A US Navy sailor signals an F/A-18E Super Hornet on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of the Operation Epic Fury attack on Iran at an undisclosed location, March 4, 2026. Photo: US Navy/Handout via REUTERS
The ceasefire with Iran is expiring. The talks collapsed after 21 hours in Islamabad. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz. Trump himself, speaking aboard Air Force One, put the choice plainly: “Maybe I won’t extend [the ceasefire]. So you have a blockade, and unfortunately, we’ll have to start dropping bombs again.”
That is the right instinct. But dropping bombs alone is not a strategy. It is a continuation of what has not worked. The question before the administration is not whether to apply pressure, but what kind of pressure actually changes Iran’s calculus. The answer requires being honest about what the war has so far failed to accomplish, and clear about what must follow.
Start with what the strikes achieved and what they did not. The United States and Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader, wiped out much of its senior military command, and damaged its nuclear facilities. These were historic accomplishments. But US intelligence assessments say Iran’s regime likely will remain in place for now, weakened but more hardline, with the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) exerting greater control. As one analyst put it: “When President Trump says he has changed the regime in Iran, he’s right in one sense: he’s changed it to a much more radicalized regime.” The war shifted who holds power in Tehran, but it did not shift what that power wants.
The IRGC, which now runs Iran more openly than at any point since 1979, looks at the nuclear question through the lens of survival. Analysts say the IRGC will be looking toward the example of North Korea, noting that the country has not been subject to attacks precisely because it possesses a nuclear deterrent. Former Supreme Leader Khamenei’s fatwa banning a nuclear bomb died with him, and for any military whose conventional deterrence has been degraded, the ultimate deterrent is now “a very attractive prospect.”
This is the central strategic reality the Trump administration must accept: Iran’s incentive to acquire a nuclear weapon has increased, not decreased, as a result of the war. Bombing alone will not change that. Only a combination of measures that makes the pursuit of the bomb more costly than abandoning it can.
The first requirement is maintaining the naval blockade unconditionally, regardless of Iranian announcements about Hormuz openings. Iran has been selectively admitting ships from China, Turkey, Pakistan, and India under bilateral arrangements while blocking others, converting the strait into a political instrument rather than surrendering the leverage it provides. A blockade that can be circumvented through side deals is not a blockade. It is theater. CENTCOM must enforce the blockade against all sanctioned traffic without exceptions, including Chinese tankers, and Trump must be prepared to make that enforcement the hill his presidency stands on, economically and diplomatically.
The second requirement is activating European snap-back sanctions immediately. Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged European countries on April 18 to quickly reimpose sanctions, warning that Iran is approaching nuclear weapons capability. This call should not have been made publicly as a request. It should have been delivered as a condition. Washington has leverage over European access to American markets and defense cooperation that it has consistently refused to use in Iran policy. That reluctance must end. A European sanctions regime that closes off the money that the blockade does not reach, will give Iran no economic off-ramp that does not run through US terms.
The third requirement is the most uncomfortable to name. The Iranian people have already done the work the administration hoped bombing would do. Surveys conducted inside Iran show that Iranians believe protests, foreign pressure, and intervention are more likely to bring about political change than elections and reforms. The regime is militarily weakened, culturally weakened, and economically weakened, with a plummeting currency. Protests that began in December 2025 over economic conditions grew into nationwide demonstrations in all 31 provinces, with hundreds of thousands participating and calls shifting from economic grievances to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic itself. This is the most significant popular uprising Iran has seen since 1979, and it is happening right now, under the weight of the war and the blockade.
Trump called on the Iranian people to take their government at the outset of the war. He should not abandon that call as a diplomatic inconvenience. Materially supporting the opposition, providing Internet access to circumvent the regime’s blackout, and making unambiguous public commitments to the protesters that American pressure will not cease while the IRGC shoots demonstrators in the street are actions within the administration’s power. They cost nothing militarily and they impose a political cost on the regime that no bomb can replicate.
A deal that leaves Iran with a five-year enrichment window and underground missile cities under reconstruction is not a deal. It is a countdown. Trump knows what the alternative looks like. He should pursue it.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx
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Podcast Hosts and Others Must Continue to Call Out Tucker Carlson for His Hatred
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
Patrick Bet-David, host of the PBD podcast, made an open video to Tucker Carlson in which he offered to have accountants check Bet-David’s finances as well as his wife’s, to see if Israel has given him money. At the same time, the accountants would look into Carlson and his wife to see if Qatar or other countries have given Carlson money.
Though Carlson will certainly not agree to it, it is a good step to put pressure on Carlson. Carlson’s goal is to turn Christians against Israel — and right now, against Trump. It’s not by chance that he falsely claimed Israeli President Isaac Herzog was on Epstein island. There’s no evidence of it, and Carlson made it up out of his desire to vilify Israel.
Bet-David did an interview with Netanyahu, and didn’t call him a genocider — which was tough for Carlson to handle. Carlson absurdly thought Netanyahu would sit for an interview with him. It will never happen because Carlson, whether motivated by money, revenge, or something we don’t know, has been on the warpath against Israel and Jews, obsessively speaking about these two topics. In addition, he is suddenly buddies with those on the far-left who also hate Israel. Known as the horseshoe effect, those on the far-right and far-left can disagree on everything under the sun, but unite in their hatred of Jews.
Carlson is charismatic and has great delivery, though I’m not sure why his absurd laugh hasn’t thrown people off. In this attention economy, it’s about starting conversations. Bet-David smartly put it out there for Carlson to show transparency, which he will not do. What makes this interesting is that when Carlson was first ousted from Fox News, Bet-David made it publicly known that he was offering Carlson a huge amount of money to work for him. This was before Carlson became anti-Israel.
Bet-David was born in Iran, and fled the country to come to America. Bet-David was also right to question why Carlson was downplaying the harms of Sharia law, and focusing on what Carlson thought were its benefits.
My hope is that this leads to Carlson coming on Bet-David’s show. I doubt he will, although there is a small chance because he may think Bet-David is not as intellectual as Douglas Murray or Ben Shapiro. While that’s true, Bet-David is charismatic, can make good points at times, and his experience seeing the evils of Iran firsthand would make for an interesting conversation with Carlson.
It is hard to understand why people believe the things that Carlson and Candace Owens say, though their personalities can be entertaining, and someone unaware of facts perhaps might think they were correct.
Irrespective of the outcome of the Iran war, Carlson is ready with the narrative that it is a disaster. He said that millions could die if America attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities before Trump took action last June. Of course, that didn’t happen. Being wrong has no consequences in Carlson’s mind; it’s about ratcheting up hatred of Israel and positioning it as an enemy of America. At times, it seems Carlson is the one standing against America. As Bet-David pointed out, Carlson said that Sharia law was leading the Muslim world to thrive, while it was declining under America. Carlson also had everyone believing that he was a big fan of President Donald Trump, until text messages revealed he hated him.
While I have my criticisms of Bet-David for not asking tougher questions to idiotic and Jew-hating guests, he deserves credit for calling out Carlson and outing him under the microscope. Because when that is done, what we find is quite ugly. Carlson, through charisma and absurdity, is trying to mainstream the idea that Israel is the enemy of America. He is hoping to reel people in on the lie that Israel bullied America into the war. That’s not the case — and everyone who knows that must continually question Tucker on it.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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The Media Is Biased Against Israel; What Should We Do About It?
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Where do we turn when we want to understand Israel as it actually is? Many people still instinctively answer with confidence: newspapers.
It feels rational, grounded, almost automatic. Yet the deeper you look into the global media landscape, the more that confidence begins to erode. What appears to be information often carries something more subtle beneath the surface. It carries intention, framing, and sometimes an agenda that quietly reshapes reality.
Across Israeli media alone, the range is undeniable. Haaretz represents a distinctly left-leaning voice, often sharply critical of Israeli policy and identity. Israel Hayom stands firmly on the right, reflecting a more nationalist perspective. Between them sit publications with all kinds of views.
Diversity in the media is often celebrated as a cornerstone of democracy. In theory, it should strengthen understanding. In practice, it can create confusion when the same reality is presented through completely different lenses. The problem is not that perspectives differ. The problem is that language itself becomes a battleground, shaping perception long before facts are even considered.
Words define the limits of thought. When certain terms are repeated often enough, they stop being questioned. They become accepted truth. The choice between “West Bank” and “Judea and Samaria” is not simply semantic. It reflects history, identity, and legitimacy. One term suggests a modern political construct, the other connects to thousands of years of Jewish presence. The same applies when Jewish communities are labeled as settlements while Arab communities are described as towns. These are not neutral distinctions. They carry implicit judgments that influence how readers interpret reality.
There is a third category: outlets that challenge the normalization of narratives that undermine Israel’s legitimacy. News outlets that refuse to adopt language that distorts historical context do not eliminate bias, but make their perspective transparent rather than disguising it as objectivity.
The broader issue extends beyond terminology. In much of the global media, there is an undercurrent that frames Israel as an outsider, a disruptor, even a colonial presence. This framing is rarely stated outright, yet it appears through emphasis, omission, and tone. Running negative stories about Israel, and positive stories about Gaza is one example that shapes how a country is perceived. Over time, repetition turns suggestion into assumption. Readers absorb these narratives without realizing how deeply they have been shaped.
At the same time, the boundaries of acceptable speech have shifted. On social media platforms, expressing certain criticisms can lead to immediate consequences. Yet hostility toward Israel often circulates freely, sometimes crossing into open antisemitism without similar repercussions. This imbalance does not create fairness. It creates distortion.
Education, which should serve as a safeguard against such distortion, is not immune either. In parts of Europe, including the Netherlands, concerns have emerged about how Holocaust education is approached in increasingly diverse classrooms. When historical truth becomes something to be softened or avoided, the consequences extend far beyond the classroom. Memory fades, context disappears, and space is created for narratives that would otherwise be challenged.
Against this backdrop, the role of media becomes even more critical. Journalism should not be about shaping reality to fit a narrative. It should be about presenting facts with clarity and context. Yet when neutrality becomes a mask for selective framing, trust begins to erode.
This is why clarity matters. Not forced neutrality, not artificial balance, but honest positioning. Readers are not misled by perspective. They are misled by the illusion of objectivity when it does not truly exist.
The responsibility does not lie solely with journalists. Readers must also engage actively, questioning what they read, recognizing patterns, and seeking context beyond headlines. Passive consumption allows narratives to take root unchecked. Critical thinking challenges them.
Standing for Israel in today’s information landscape is not simply about defending policies or decisions. It is about defending the integrity of language and the accuracy of history. It is about refusing to accept distortions simply because they are repeated often enough.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.