Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (32 page)

Shaplen wrote: “The meeting broke up shortly after a discussion of the press, which some of the wives condemned for overpublicizing the militant captors and further arousing passions in America. ‘We’re very conscious of the level of hysteria,’ Newsom said, in conclusion. ‘For that reason, we’re trying to step up visits to the hostages, to make them feel more secure and quiet things down here.’”

In the earlier session with just a few of the families that Carter had attended, the president had pledged not to “take any military action that would cause bloodshed or arouse the unstable captors of our hostages to attack them or punish them.” Those present had been heartened by the words “our hostages.”

At that meeting, Rosen had taken advantage of a brief moment with the president to hand him snapshots of her two daughters, and told him, “If you consider using guns, I hope you will think of the chance Barry will have.” Carter put the photos in his pocket.

For his part, Brzezinski avoided those meetings. He did not want the emotions to interfere with his judgment, or, perhaps more to the point, to interfere with his ability to advocate placing the national interest above the lives of the hostages. Vance urged the president to get the shah out of the country, something the dethroned monarch had graciously volunteered to do already. Brzezinski counseled that such a move amounted to pure capitulation.

At a foreign policy breakfast with the president on November 9, the national security adviser had warned against allowing the crisis to “settle into a state of normalcy.”

“If you do, it could paralyze your presidency,” he had said. “I hope we never have to choose between the hostages and our nation’s honor in the world but, Mr. President, you must be prepared for that. If they’re still in captivity at Thanksgiving, what will that say about your presidency and America’s image in the world?”

Vance continued to urge patience. He mentioned President Johnson’s calm handling of the Pueblo incident.

“But that went on for a year!” said Brzezinski.

“And Johnson wasn’t in the middle of a reelection campaign,” said Jordan.

Brzezinski’s position gained strength when the U.S. embassy in Islamabad was overrun by a mob and burned on November 21, killing two Americans and two Pakistani employees. A few weeks later, a mob in Tripoli attacked the U.S. embassy there and burned part of it, along with the cars parked outside. The fourteen Americans at that mission escaped unharmed. Vance told TV reporters that he did not see a pattern in these events, but he was probably the only one who didn’t.

Carter was determined not to let his hopes for reelection dictate his handling of the matter, and no matter how it played politically he trod a careful line between his two advisers. The fact that it was virtually impossible to rescue the hostages made the decision easier. He had little choice but to pursue a negotiated solution, and to find ways to put more pressure on Iran, but every move seemed simply to worsen matters. There was apparently no way to even initiate dialogue. The crisis was at a complete impasse.

Carter’s anger was kept under tight rein in public, but it showed in private. He ordered the military to draw up detailed plans for air strikes against Iran if and when the hostages were released.

“I want to punish them,” he said. “Really hit them. They must know that they can’t fool around with us.”

Such strikes in advance of getting the hostages home safely might mollify public opinion but would only worsen matters. Brzezinski played out the scenario in his head: Iran would certainly retaliate by giving the hostages show trials and executing some of them. Apart from the appalling personal tragedy that would entail, it would compel an even more aggressive American response, which might bring the Soviets in on the side of the Iranians and lead to an uncontrollable conflict. No matter how much America cared about the hostages, their fate was not worth the risk of an all-out nuclear exchange. Such thoughts sketched out the recklessness of Iran’s behavior.

The dilemma centered on one of the most basic and Gordian questions of democratic society: Which was more important, the individual or the state? Should Carter’s priority be the larger national interest, or should national interest take a backseat to the fate of several score American citizens? These were, most of them, volunteers who had sought out hazardous postings. Brzezinski and Vance ably represented both sides of this question, but Carter was, above all else, a pragmatist. When possible, pragmatists avoid confronting the hardest questions. For a nation like revolutionary Iran, which saw itself as divinely inspired, the question was easy. The will of the state was the will of Allah. Millions might be blithely sacrificed in His name. But for America there could never be a clear answer. The preeminence of the individual was a bedrock principle of the state, yet all but the most fanatical libertarians knew of instances, say, in times of war or natural catastrophe, when the government was compelled to disregard it. Carter did not yet face war or catastrophe. He told his staff that so far as he was concerned the interests of the state and the well-being of the American hostages in Iran were one and the same, so there was no dilemma. The only sensible option was to wait and see if somebody in Tehran was willing to talk.

Waiting might have big political costs for Carter. The image of a timid, hog-tied president was too tempting for his political enemies to resist. Kennedy flailed around rhetorically, probing for a way to capitalize on Carter’s predicament. He held a press conference to denounce the shah’s regime, exaggerating its sins, criticizing Carter for allowing him into the United States, and calling for an “open debate” over America’s role in propping up and sustaining his regime.

“The shah ran one of the most violent regimes in the history of mankind,” Kennedy said. “How do we justify the United States on one hand accepting that individual [the shah] because he would like to come here and stay here with his umpteen billions of dollars that he has stolen from Iran, and at the same time say to Hispanics who are here illegally that they have to wait nine years to bring their children into this country.” Kennedy said the administration should have known that admitting the shah would lead to a confrontation with the revolutionary leaders of Iran.

His comments were front-page news in Tehran and were warmly received, but they proved a bad miscalculation of the American mood. Iranian applause was political poison at home, where it smelled like capitulation, and Kennedy was criticized from every quarter. Stung, he promptly withdrew his proposals and said that a long conversation with Secretary of State Vance had convinced him that they were premature.

Henry Kissinger, whose advocacy on behalf of the shah had helped precipitate the crisis, surfaced on The Dick Cavett Show to urge that the shah be encouraged to stay in America as long as he wished. He advised his fellow Americans to “keep cool.”

“This is a situation where we are all obliged to support the people handling it,” he said, in a somewhat tepid endorsement of Carter, and then, dodging his own role in the affair, “There is no point in second-guessing it.” He finished with a subtle stab at the White House, hinting at presidential timidity. “When this is over we should find out what it is that makes foreign leaders think they can deal with the United States in this manner.”

Journalist Stephen S. Rosenfeld wrote in the Washington Post that the real error made by the Carter White House was not in admitting the shah but in pursuing “a constructive link with the new Iran” instead of cutting ties.

He wrote: “The administration’s real vulnerability, I think, lies in its expectation—hardheaded in pursuit of oil, softheaded in its pursuit of Third World favor—that things were settling down in Iran, that the moderates were prevailing; that the extremists could be trimmed to size; that the United States could gain more from betting on the future (by providing its presence, arms, grain, heating fuel, schooling, etc.) than from cutting itself out of the game…. I sense a new rage, a disgust, building in this country against the president. He will pay.”

Even though the polls did not yet bear out Rosenfeld’s prediction, Carter knew that unless something happened they would. In a staff meeting at Camp David near the end of November, he reviewed all of the military options at his disposal and settled upon a broad strategy of ratcheting up pressure on Iran. First he would condemn, then threaten, then break relations, then mine three harbors, then bomb Abadan, and, if all this failed, put up a total blockade.

The president, at Brzezinski’s urging, also authorized a private message to be conveyed through an intermediary to Iran’s foreign minister, making a point of saying that the contents would not be made public so that there would be less danger of it being perceived as an empty threat: If one hostage was killed or seriously harmed, the United States would respond as though all the hostages had been, and the response would be swift and harsh.

On the last day of November, a Friday, Bruce Laingen watched as the day unfolded outside the tall third-floor windows of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s formal reception suite. Thanksgiving had come and gone and there was no change in the crisis. Initially, he, Tomseth, and Howland had stayed on at the Foreign Ministry out of solidarity with their colleagues, but their voluntary stay had evolved into something that, for all practical purposes, was imprisonment. Partly out of a sense of duty, partly out of loyalty to their captive colleagues, and partly out of respect for the other foreign missions in Tehran, the three were stuck, suspended in a bubble of increasingly awkward protocol.

It was a holiday in Iran, Ashura, a celebration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. The ministry building was empty except for the “security guards,” who over the previous three weeks had begun to seem less like protectors and more like jailers. On this day Laingen noted that they seemed more nervous, with huge street demonstrations planned throughout the city. If a mob decided to storm the ministry and seize the despised American “spies,” there was no way it could have been held off by such a small force.

Laingen watched as clumps of demonstrators moved in the streets below toward Tehran University for the Friday prayer meeting, center for the day’s celebrations. Many carried homemade placards and posters. The whole nation was in the grip of Islamist fervor, a kind of mass hysteria. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr had lasted only a few weeks as foreign minister, ousted apparently by mullahs who felt he was insufficiently pious to represent the nation overseas, and when Laingen heard a helicopter approach and land in the ministry’s garden, he recognized the figure stepping out as Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the replacement, back from an overnight visit to Qom, the real seat of power now in Iran.

Ghotbzadeh seemed an unlikely choice, a suave, dapper, clean-shaven man who did not wear religion on his sleeve. He was a thickset, swarthy man with small, deep-set eyes and a great broad nose, whose face seemed bottom heavy, with a wide mouth and the chin and jaw of a cartoon boxer. Ghotbzadeh was a smart, ambitious nationalist who had earned a degree of flexibility in an increasingly rigid Iran by dint of the friendship and alliance he had formed with Khomeini in Paris. Still, today was a day that demanded a show of reverence. He stepped right into a waiting Mercedes, no doubt hurrying to the Friday prayers, a great public show of faith held weekly on the grounds of Tehran University. It was now mandatory for all high officials.

The prayer meeting was on the radio. Laingen had been to them often enough—most recently with Henry Precht—so he could picture the whole scene, which he recorded in his diary, something reminiscent of old Nazi newsreels or the images in George Orwell’s 1984, only with an Islamic cast:

The high-pitched voice of the Friday ( Jomeh) preacher, the Ayatollah [Husayn-ali] Montazari, lecturing, cajoling, beseeching the crowds that by now jam every square foot of the university grounds and spread out in adjoining streets in all directions. The radio speaks of a million, possibly two, citizens of Tehran listening, remarkably attentive and orderly. The women are carefully segregated, the children surely restless, yet there is little evidence of this to our ears. The preacher, bearded and turbaned, stands with a bayonet and rifle in one hand, gesticulating with the other, without notes. His rostrum is a stage erected at one end of the main plaza of the university grounds. White cloth banners, emblazoned with black revolutionary and religious slogans, completely cover the outline of this elevated stand. The backdrop is a vast drawing on cloth of the face of Ayatollah Khomeini, gazing unsmiling and stern at the crowds below. At the very mention of the name Khomeini, the vast throng erupts in sound with thundering repeats of his name and then subsides into respectful attention.

After Montazari’s performance, a representative of the now celebrated Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line, heroic conquerors of the American fortress at the heart of the capital, urged the millions to march on the “den of spies.” Hateful rhetoric about the United States was developing a florid lexicon. Americans were “world-devouring ghouls,” who “skinned alive the meek ones” and “stripped nations of their resources.”

“Carter is vanquished!” came a shout from the crowd.

“Khomeini is victorious!” came another.

Symbols had replaced reality. It was as though taking hostage sixty-six unguarded Americans amounted to a great military victory.

Laingen wrote:

Through it all we are reminded of our colleagues inside the embassy compound…Daily they are beset by the rolling pressing sound of thousands of voices from the streets around them, calling for death to America, Carter, and imperialism. We are sick at heart, always fearful that mass hysteria of this kind could erupt into violence…We are saddened and depressed by this deliberate fostering of hate and venom and bitterness. We dread the thought of trying to sleep—sleep is almost impossible to achieve because of the pain and worry about where this tragedy will end.

To conclude the day’s festivities, Khomeini had called on everyone in Tehran to go to their rooftops and shout, “Allahuakbar!” for fifteen minutes. Outside the embassy walls the cries rose all over the teeming city, especially from the seemingly endless expanse of low gray and brown structures of the crowded slums to the south. Over and over and over again: