Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (18 page)

Carter’s natural inclination was to knock the shah down a peg by insisting on democratic reforms in Iran, but the country’s geopolitical importance and the uncertain prospect of what might come after the monarchy counseled a warm outward acceptance of the status quo. In private, the shah was pushed to make his country more tolerant and liberal, and he responded with democratic gestures that had the unintended effect of uncapping decades of suppressed anger. As Iranians tasted new freedom to express themselves, the volume of protest grew and the population was further emboldened. Long-simmering economic problems came to a boil. There were crippling strikes and a mounting series of humiliating and threatening street demonstrations that the shah dared not ruthlessly suppress. No one opposition faction had the power to remove him, but together they were unstoppable. By 1978 the Peacock Throne was teetering. Not that American intelligence and military assessments realized it; it was uniformly predicted that the shah would weather the storm.

What the Western intelligence reports missed was the awakening giant of traditional Islam, a grassroots rebellion against the values of the secular, modern world. The rise of Khomeini and the mullahocracy took everyone by surprise. The turbaned classes were overlooked because they were considered vestiges, representatives of a fading ancient world. But away from the affluent, Westernized neighborhoods where American diplomats and visiting military officers lived and visited, the mullahs had been building a national network of mosques, which waited patiently for the moment Islam would rise up and smite the infidels and their puppet king. The true believers found unlikely allies among the more worldly socialists and nationalists of the middle and upper classes. Support for change grew openly on college campuses, and even among the vast military bureaucracy that maintained the shah’s war machine. In this, Iran’s secular rebels underestimated the mullahs. They saw in the mosque network a useful method of rallying huge public displays and giving their movement muscle, but assumed the ayatollahs would retire to Qom after the revolution and tend to strictly spiritual matters. United in their hatred of the shah, they accomplished the revolution that one State Department official had called “unthinkable.” Sick with cancer, the shah, along with his family, had flown out of Iran in February 1979, never to return.

Nine months later, the crisis seemed to have passed. In Washington, the collapse of the Peacock Throne had been a shock and a blow, but from all appearances the mullahs and other factions involved were feuding too badly to agree on what to do next. And despite the steady stream of anti-American rhetoric from Khomeini and lesser Iranian leaders, there were signs that the practical value of a working relationship with the United States was beginning to offset ideological objections. In the previous month, the country had accepted Bruce Laingen’s appointment as chargé d’affaires, resumed importation of spare parts for its American-built jets, and unofficially initiated closer ties—Prime Minister Bazargan’s unscheduled meeting with Brzezinski in Algiers. Carter knew that allowing the shah into America would set back these gains, but despite an immediate outpouring of anger none of the dire predictions had come to pass. By this first week of November, the shah was recovering from surgery in a New York hospital and Iran had become just one of many troubling situations around the world, one that seemed to require observation more than management.

More pressing for Carter and his inner circle was the coming election. Going into that contest, the administration’s foreign policy record was counted a strength. Chief among Carter’s successes had been the hard-won Camp David accords, which had ended years of hostility between Egypt and Israel and placed on more hopeful footing the seemingly implacable Arab-Israeli conflict. There was also the historic new nuclear arms pact with the Soviet Union (the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement). At its essence, the Cold War was an ideological clash stalled on the doorstep of an annihilating nuclear exchange, and for decades most experts feared the most likely trigger would be war in the Middle East. With its vital oil resources, both the communist and capitalist worlds had a huge stake in the region’s local disputes, so any time there was war in that part of the world there was the overarching fear that it could escalate and engulf the planet. Carter’s efforts had made that prospect less likely.

The frightening potenial for an all-out nuclear war, however, is what first occurred to Jordan when he heard the news of the embassy takeover. If it meant the United States would be going to war against Iran, how would Moscow react? Where would that lead? The possibilities were scary, but upon reflection the episode, while an outrage, appeared less portentous. When the embassy had been overrun in February, it had taken only a few hours for the country’s provisional government to chase off the invaders; it had behaved very responsibly. There was every reason to think this would happen again. Ties between the United States and the interim authority had marginally improved, and Iran’s best interests, always the most reliable guide to a nation’s actions, dictated a swift and peaceful resolution. Jordan decided against calling the president. As he drove into Washington a few hours later he was disappointed to find that the talk on the radio was all about Tehran instead of about the pending Kennedy interview.

National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski presented a measured assessment of the crisis at a meeting with the president and vice president later that morning, and chaired the first session of a newly constituted Special Coordinating Committee, formed to deal with the situation in Tehran. There he heard CIA director Stansfield Turner explain that the spy agency was not even sure which faction in Iran’s roiling political pot was responsible. Turner, an admiral who had been a classmate of the president’s at Annapolis, was embarrassed by his agency’s lack of sources and access in Iran; the most reliable information was coming from news reports, as there was a significant international news presence in Tehran, including several American newspaper reporters and the BBC. Yet no one seemed to know who was behind the attack. Because they didn’t know for sure what was going on, all agreed that caution in public statements would be wise—an angry or belligerent response might alienate a potential ally. The committee decided to send two special emissaries to Tehran immediately to explore a resolution and resolved to ask two prominent Americans who might be viewed favorably by the revolutionary powers there: former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark and William Miller, staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. A frequent critic of American foreign policy, Clark had befriended many anti-shah Iranians living in the United States prior to the revolution and in the previous year had marched with anti-shah protesters, and Miller some years earlier had protested America’s relationship with Iran’s monarch by resigning as political section chief in Tehran, the same position now held by Vic Tomseth. After deciding on emissaries, Brzezinski’s committee took up other options. What impact might it have on international oil supplies? Iran was responsible for only about 4 percent of the oil imported to the United States, a percentage that could be readily made up from other sources, so there wasn’t much concern that the incident would return the nation to gas lines and rationing. What countersteps might the government take against Iranian diplomats and the thousands of Iranians living in the United States? What punitive measures might be taken? How feasible was a rescue attempt?

To address this last question, a special group consisting of Turner and joint chiefs chairman General David Jones met with Brzezinski afterward in his office. They agreed to set up a planning group immediately to figure out what, if anything, the military could do. The wiry, Polish-born intellectual was more cold-blooded about foreign affairs and American power than the president and most of his advisers. Carter had apprenticed himself to the former Harvard professor a decade earlier when he first began considering a run for the White House, in recognition of his shortcomings in this area, and had called himself Brzezinski’s “eager student.” He had installed his tutor at his right shoulder in the White House, where Brzezinski was the voice of experience and hard-edged realism in an often idealistic inner circle. The national security adviser was the son of Polish diplomat Tadeusz Brzezinski, and living abroad with his family as a boy he had watched the Nazis come to power in Germany in the 1930s and, later, lived in Moscow during the years when Stalin was at the height of his murderous rule. His home country had been conquered twice in the ensuing world conflict and was still a Soviet satellite. Educated in Canada and at Harvard, Brzezinski knew foreign policy as a “game for grown-ups,” as he put it, and knew that sometimes the imperatives of state, driven as they were by the vital interests of millions, could not be swayed by concern for the well-being of individuals trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was something of an anomaly in Carter’s inner circle, but was placed there for precisely that reason. Even though he wanted various military options explored, Brzezinski was initially confident that this outrage in Tehran would swiftly be put right by the Iranian authorities.

Across town, on the seventh floor of the State Department building, Iran Desk chief Henry Precht held a less sanguine view, especially when word reached Washington that Khomeini had endorsed the action. He suspected this meant they were in for a long standoff. The Iranian “promise” that the White House was leaning on so heavily had been tentative at best. Precht had been in the room in Tehran when it was given, after he had personally informed the provisional leadership of Carter’s decision to admit the shah.

It was at that meeting that Ibrahim Yazdi had predicted trouble. He had said, “We’ll do our best…we’ll do what we can.”

It was hardly an ironclad assurance. Now, with Khomeini backing the students, Precht knew Bazargan’s government would be powerless.

He had heard about the embassy takeover in his car, driving home from upstate New York on Sunday with his wife after a day visit with their son at Colgate University. He had gone straight into the office, where he had helped set up the crisis room, right around the corner from the office of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. It was equipped with a long table and lines of telephones and telex machines.

Precht was asked to draft a letter from President Carter to Khomeini, something that could be hand-delivered by Clark and Miller. The standing instructions for such letters was that they be written with the expectation that they would be leaked, that they would soon appear on the front page of the New York Times, which meant, Precht knew, that the White House would want to sound tough. The mood in the country was angry. But from what he knew about Iran he doubted tough talk would help. In Shia Iran, the threat to spill blood only played into the country’s fetish for martyrdom. Khomeini would almost certainly call America’s bluff, and Carter would then be compelled to act. Precht counted many friends among those now tied to chairs in Tehran, and he knew that any American military action would likely mean death for some or all of them. He had talked some of those Americans into taking postings in Tehran, including one junior consulate officer who had told him during his last visit there that things were “crazy” and that they all ought to come home. Precht had reassured him, as well as plenty of the others. Now he felt personally responsible for their safety. His draft of the letter to Khomeini struck a conciliatory tone, one that acknowledged the legitimacy of some of Iran’s grievances and that was less concerned with expressing American indignation than with persuasion. He wanted to convince the imam, not confront him.

The letter would get a stern reworking by Brzezinski, but remained a remarkably restrained document. It contained neither threats nor concessions. America wished to reopen a dialogue with Iran and to restore friendly ties. The shah would stay in the United States until his treatment was finished but there were assurances that the stay would be temporary, and to offset suspicion that he had been admitted for reasons other than medical, Iranian authorities were offered access to the doctors treating him. The independence and territorial integrity of Iran were acknowledged, and the mutually beneficial possibility of reestablishing a military supply relationship was mentioned, but in the final draft there was no hint of Precht’s “legitimate grievances.” It read, in part:

In the name of the American people, I ask that you release unharmed all Americans presently detained in Iran and those held with them and allow them to leave your country safely and without delay. I ask you to recognize the compelling humanitarian reasons, firmly based in international law, for doing so.I have asked both men to meet with you and to hear from you your perspective on events in Iran and the problems which have arisen between our two countries. The people of the United States desire to have relations with Iran based upon equality, mutual respect and friendship.

Clark and Miller were invited to the White House, and indirect contacts with Ayatollah Mohammed Behesti, head of the Revolutionary Council, indicated that if these two men came as Carter’s personal emissaries—unlike the formal American mission in Tehran—they would be politely received.

This mission was supposed to remain top secret, but Richard Valeriani, who covered the State Department for NBC, found out. A veteran on the beat who had traveled the world with Henry Kissinger, Valeriani had gotten to know people in the State Department office who handled the logistics of official travel. On the hunch that the White House would be sending an emissary to Iran, he called up the office and pretended to know there was a mission afoot.

“Do you know yet who is going?” he asked his friend.

“Ramsey Clark,” the source said, “and some other guy.” As Valeriani scribbled, the man turned away from the phone and yelled across his office, “Who’s going to Tehran with Clark?” Then he came back on the line. “Bill Miller,” he said.

Valeriani took the scoop to Hodding Carter, the State Department spokesman, for confirmation.