During the Iranian hostage crisis while Jimmy Carter dithered endlessly, several trips to Tehran were organized by leftist clergy such as William Sloane Coffin, featuring propaganda displays like Christmas dinners and speeches praising the hostage takers and condemning the United States.

The mullahs are now seeking to duplicate those glorious days of yesteryear, reaching out to the international self-hating left in a four-day seminar for useful idiots.

October 12, 2007 — ANXIOUS to create what they call “a global progressive front,” Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela are sponsoring projects to underline “the ideological kinship of the left and revolutionary Islam.”

The theme - hammered in by Ahmadinejad during his recent visit to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia - inspired a four-day seminar organized by his supporters at Tehran University last week (partly financed by Chavez).

The hope was that the conference would produce a synthesis of Marxist and Khomeinist ideologies and highlight what the Iranian leader has labeled “the divine aspect of revolutionary war.” But the event itself proved rather embarrassing.

The conference title was “Che Like Chamran,” a play on words designed to emphasize “the common goals” of Marxism and Islamism. It honored Mostafa Chamran on the 26th anniversary of his death, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of the death of the Cuban-Argentine guerrilla icon Che Guevara.

But there seem to be some minor differences in outlook between the useful idiots and those who would use them.

Things went pear-shape thanks to one keynote speakers, Hajj Saeed Qassemi, whose title is “coordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom.” Praising the late “Che” as “a true revolutionary who made the American Great Satan tremble,” he “revealed” that Guevara had been “a truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union.”

“Today, communism has been consigned to the garbage can of history as foreseen by Imam Khomeini,” Qassemi said. “Thus progressists everywhere must accept the leadership of our religious, pro-justice movement.”

Demanding the right to respond, Aleida Guevara told the conference that Qassemi’s claim might be based on a bad translation: “My father never mentioned God,” she said as the hall sighed in chagrined disbelief. “He never met God.”

The remarks caused a commotion amid which Aleida and her brother were whisked away, led into a car and driven to their hotel under escort.

Wlll the idiots learn anything from this experience? I’ll take a wild guess: no.