Profile: John Limbert

Distinguished Careers in U.S. Diplomacy

I’m sharing sketches of the U.S. diplomats featured in Profiles in Service (Moonshine Cove Press, Dec 2025) every Tuesday; later in the week I’ll share a related moment linking Peace Corps service to diplomatic efforts, some simple, some strange, some extraordinary.

Ta’arof

I was a diplomat accredited to Iran, to whatever government was there. So that was the persona I was going to have.

-John Limbert

Before becoming the Supreme Leader of Iran in 1989, Ali Hosseini Khamenei—today Supreme Leader of Iran and the Middle East’s longest-serving head of state—visited with Second Secretary John Limbert.

The meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran couldn’t have been held under stranger circumstances.

It was April 1980, and Limbert had been held hostage, sometimes bound, sometimes in solitary and incommunicado, sometimes interrogated in bizarre and puzzling ways, for five months.

Shouldn’t it be Limbert, not his inquisitor, with the paper bag over his head? Why flail about blindly putting questions to their prisoner when the answers they sought—names and addresses of Iranian contacts—were right under their noses in Limbert’s rolodex?

What Tehran’s then-Friday prayer leader found during his call on Limbert wasn’t a broken or angry man. Instead, he found a man with his diplomatic identity intact, capable of subtlety and finding connections between peoples in conflict.

As much as you dislike the thugs in your host country, or whatever they are, you don’t berate them. You kind of smile at them and you talk to them, and you pretend that you’re dealing with normal human beings.

-John Limbert

Limbert would draw on his long experience steeped in Iranian culture, including as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sanandaj from 1964-1966, to remind Khamenei about the traditions and values his captors—and Khamenei himself—had violated.

On Thursday we’ll look at Limbert’s version of events in the video linked above, and how his mastery of cultural cues allowed him to turn the table on his captors.

During his 34-year diplomatic career with the State Department, Limbert served mostly in the Middle East, including two tours in Iraq, and Islamic Africa. He was ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (2000-2003), and served as president of the American Foreign Service Association from 2003-2005. He retired from the post of Dean of the Foreign Service Institute (lately NFATC) language school in 2006. After retirement, he was brought back to serve as the first deputy assistant secretary of State for Iranian affairs from 2009-2010.

Read more from Limbert’s oral histories with the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training:

Full Career

As AFSA President

View from wife Parveneh Limbert

To follow Limbert’s and other diplomats’ stories from the forthcoming Profiles in Service, consider subscribing below. And please share your thoughts in the comments section. Thank you.

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