Veteran U.S. diplomat John Limbert, a former official at the U.S. embassy in Tehran taken hostage thirty years ago this week and held for fourteen months, started this week as a senior Iran official at the State Department, foreign policy hands tell POLITICO.

Limbert will serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, several officials at the State Department and White House confirmed. Limbert did not immediately respond to a query. DAS appointments are not normally publicly announced, officials said, to explain the as yet unannounced appointment, which was said to have been in the works for some time.

A former ambassador to Mauritania who speaks fluent Farsi, Limbert retired from a 33-year career with the Foreign Service in 2006 with the rank of Minister-Counselor. He is the recipient of the Department's highest award, the Distinguished Service Award, as well as an Award for Valor for his more than a year as a hostage in Iran, months of it spent in solitary confinement. He has been teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy since 2006, and also served as president of the American Foreign Service Assocation (2003-2005). This year, he published a book through the US Institute of Peace, Negotiating with Tehran: Wrestling with the Ghosts of History -- a subject that will come in handy in his new role in the Obama administration. (Here's the Cliff Notes version.)

He spoke Wednesday at an event at the National Iranian American Council, of which he is on the advisory board, on the thirtieth anniversary of the hostage crisis, and was said to have had an unpublicized ceremony marking his new appointment at State on Thursday.

"He's a wonderful choice, one of the most decent people I know and someone who has the best interests of the United States and Iran in mind," said the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Karim Sadjadpour.

State has been without a senior Iran hand since Dennis Ross, previously a special advisor to Secretary Clinton on Iran and Persian Gulf issues, moved over to the NSC to become a special assistant to the president focusing on Iran and wider regional strategy in late June.

Limbert will report to Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, department sources said, and will also take an active role with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns in negotiations with Iran, now that they have finally at least begun to get underway.

"He will be the most senior official at State who deals exclusively with Iran," a State Department official said, adding that in his more than two decades at the Department, "we've never had a DAS for Iran."

Given that Limbert is one of the few U.S. diplomats to have actually served in Tehran and who speaks the language fluently, it seems a rather exciting hire that the administration has managed to lure back from the academy, not unlike the Ryan Crocker hire for Iraq ambassador a few years back, whose work was lauded by military commanders and civilians across the board.

Limbert, who earned his PhD from Harvard in history and Middle Eastern studies, served as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching in Shiraz, Iran in the 1960s.

UPDATE: And go see this video of then Iranian deputy defense minister now Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei visiting the hostages and Limbert that Khamenei recently posted to his website. Surreal. (Video via RFERL and Andrew Sullivan. Photo at top courtesy of the National Iranian American Council.)

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