From globalsecurity.org: “When the idea of storming the American embassy in Tehran was raised by the OSU, Ahmadinejad suggested storming the Soviet embassy at the same time!” Former hostage Colonel David Roeder states: Out of his 51 interrogations, A…

It depends upon what your definition of “people’s friend” is

To be noted: but for the spineless, treasonous Carter administration which FORBADE Embassy Marines from using lethal force, (as they are authorized and bound by duty) to protect the lives and national interests within that compound, that sad chapter in our national history most certainly would have been avoided, and we would not have LOST the first battle of the Islamofacist World War.

Jokes aside, people have already commented on the numerous striking similarities between the “two” men, and I can’t find any feature that clearly distinguishes them. It’s true that the two don’t appear to be 27 years apart in age. However, the apparent similarity in age may be due partly to the guard’s squinting and to the sun’s making his nasolabial folds appear deeper than they otherwise might appear. The man in the photo from 1979 may have appeared to be older than he was because of his beard. Ahmadinejad has kept his weight down, probably drinks little or no alcohol, may die his hair, and may employ a dermatologist. One can’t give a geometric proof the two photos show the same person, but it seems very likely they do.

Regarding estimation of person’s height: I’d tend to estimate him closer to Ahmadinejad’s height. The brick height, including mortar thickness, are most likely 3 inches +/-, which is thicker than usual. That puts him in the 5′2″ to 5′4″ range. Definitely not in the area of 6′. Couple of reasons. First, the brick height is a little more than the entry step height which usually is around 7.5 to 7.75 inches, and rarely more than 8″. Second, three bricks are slightly greater than the brick length plus one mortar thickness and looks to be about an inch +/-. Third, 27+/- courses is the equivalent, via cut and paste, of the height of the entry gate or about 6′9″, which is roughly the standard entry door height.

I am curious where the close up photo came from. Is this a blowup and enhanced photo? If this original and not enhanced, then I’d say no it isn’t him for one reason. His beard across the lower lip is too full. It seems to me Ahmadinejad beard is sparse either side of center below the lip, something that does not change for some people, and is more in keeping with the picture of the guy in the first photo at Daniel Pipes post.

Not to go off subject too much, but in looking at a lot of the photos of the Iranian crisis and current ones of Ahmadinejad, one thing seems pretty common: either Iranians are generally short or the Revolution/Iranian crisis was spurred and the country is now ruled by height-challenged people.

The Embassy sat on a 27-acre compound surrounded by a high brick wall.

Description from one of the hostages (emphasis mine).

If ‘79 is 5′2″ then our “high” wall surrounding our embassy is 6′ tall—not what I’d call high.

Verbum, taller than normal doors wouldn’t be out of place at our embassy.

So unless it’s unusually tall, that guy is quite short.

I’m a fairly, um, delicately-boned man. My fingers are 3/4″ wide. Let’s assume his are similar to mine. note: the guy we know is Ahmadinx is fairly thick-fingered.

Comparing the grout width to the brick height we discover that the bricks are approx 2 & 1/4 inch high. So brick plus grout line = 3 & 1/4 inch.

There’s about 21 brick/grout heights—this puts ‘79 at 5′8″ at least (my assumptions are all to the low side favoring to the short side).

I don’t think I could say either way for sure. In this pick, Mahdi’s eyes look to be closer to his nose than the cat in the other pic. But other than that, you’d have a hard time convincing me that it couldn’t be him.

The guy on the left seems to have more of a oval shaped face/head.

The guy on the right seems to have more of a up-side down triangle shape to his face/head.

Subtle, but there you go. It’s hard to quantify, but that’s what it looks like to me.

You would only add 18 mortar counts. Remember, 2 of the ‘bricks’ are estimated based on the thickness of the concrete wall foundation.

Standard mortar thickness is about 1/2″. so .5 x 18 = 9′

That would shoot the height to 5 feet 11 inches, very nearly 6 feet. So this would tend to speak AGAINST the image being Ahmadinejad.

However, I just went and measured some of the bricks in the brick sides of my office, and they measure 2 inches in height, not 3 inches.

However, that says nothing about the brick sizes in the wall in the 1979 picture. As you can see by this page, there are TONS of available brick sizes. However, the height for a standard, non-modular (interlocking) brick is 2 1/4 in. Of course, this standard was set in 1992, well AFTER the wall in question was built. But brick sizes have varied all over the place over the years, as you can see here.

So I guess when all is said and done all you can do is get a rough guess that the terrorist in the picture from 1979 is probably between 5 and 6 feet tall. Of course, that includes about 90% of the adult population of the planet, so it’s not terribly useful after all.

At least it was a fun exercise, and I learned more about bricks than I knew yesterday. :)