Michele Bachmann told supporters in Iowa on Wednesday of her lofty plans for American diplomacy, claiming that a Bachmann presidency would mean no U.S. embassy in Iran.
Considering the recent hostility in the Iranian capital of Tehran against the British embassy, the comment might not seem particularly out of place -- if not for the fact that the U.S. hasn't actually had a functioning embassy in Iran since 1980.
NBC's Jamie Novgorod first pointed out the flop in a tweet earlier Wednesday:
The Washington Post reported recently on the latest flare-up in Tehran and on the fallout from the infamous Iran hostage crisis in 1979:
Shortly after the Nov. 4 [1979] embassy takeover, the Iranian revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, endorsed the militants, and the Bazargan government resigned. U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran were formally severed in April 1980 and have never been restored.
Bachmann has been an outspoken critic of Iran over the past few weeks. Earlier this month she urged the Pentagon to "prepare a war plan" in case of it acquiring a nuclear weapon. She later alleged that the Middle Eastern nation had threatened to launch nuclear warheads at the U.S. and Israel. PolitiFact deemed that claim "False."
On Tuesday, she told Glenn Beck that the U.S. was facing a "new axis of evil," composed of Iran, Syria, North Korea, China and Russia.