"The Old Rules Don't Apply"

Embattled diplomats and fleeing rulers of the past

No matter what the Iranians say, there is ample historical precedent for the U.S. to give sanctuary to the Shah, even on a temporary basis. Largely because of the vagaries of extradition treaties, which vary from country to country,* even the most hated of deposed rulers has usually managed to find a safe haven somewhere in the world. Egypt's decadent King Farouk luxuriated in Italy after his deposition by the army in 1952. Argentina's Dictator Juan Peron was a resident of Spain between 1960 and 1973, when he returned home to reclaim power. Uganda's murderous Idi Amin is rumored to be in Libya, while his peer as butcher, ex-Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Republic, lives in the Ivory Coast.

When he entered a Manhattan hospital for medical treatment last month, the Shah joined a large contingent of former heads of state--some honorable, some not--who have sought refuge in the U.S. Alexander Kerensky, Prime Minister of a short-lived democracy in post-Czarist Russia, eventually found a home here after his ouster by the Soviets. So did Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, South Korean Strongman Syngman Rhee, Cambodia's Marshal Lon Nol and Cuban Dictator Fulgencio Batista. South Viet Nam's former Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, a resident of California, will be eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship next spring.

There is also ample historical precedent, sadly enough, for the Iranian students' assault on the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Though the inviolability of the diplomatic envoy has been a principle practiced since the Middle Ages, embassies and representatives of governments have frequently been targets for protest. In 1829 a Persian mob--egged on by nationalistic mullahs in the court of the Shah--stormed the Russian embassy in Tehran and massacred almost the entire staff. Xenophobia figured large in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion (so called because it was led by a group named the Righteous and Harmonious Fists), when rebels seeking to wipe out foreign influence in China laid siege to the diplomatic quarter in Peking. The Boxers held the quarter for eight weeks, until an international expedition of 19,000 troops captured the city and freed the thousands held hostage. That hostility to foreigners was echoed during the Cultural Revolution in 1967, when Chairman Mao Tse-tung's Red Guards burned the British mission, beat up British and Indian diplomats and attacked the fleeing families of Soviet diplomats as they boarded their plane. Mao tacitly approved the assaults. Indonesian officials also applauded the mobs that ransacked the British embassy in Djakarta in 1963.

In the past eleven years, four American ambassadors have been killed in the line of duty. In 1968 Ambassador to Guatemala John Gordon Mein was shot during a kidnaping attempt. Ambassador to the Sudan Cleo A. Noel Jr. was murdered in 1973, when members of the Palestinian Black September group seized the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum and took six diplomats hostage. The terrorists surrendered three days later, but not before killing Noel and two other hostages. In 1974, following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus Rodger Davies was shot to death during a Greek Cypriot attack on the American embassy in Nicosia. Earlier this year, Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs was killed after being kidnaped in Kabul by right-wing Muslims.

Whatever their views of the U.S.-Iran dispute, diplomats everywhere agree that Khomeini's support of the assault is a dangerous precedent. "Under the tenets of diplomatic immunity," explains Robert Beers, executive director of the American Foreign Service Association, "anyone accredited to another country as a diplomat is entitled to the protection of the host government. This protection is exactly what has been violated in this instance." The outrage in Tehran suggests that this vital principle of discourse between nations may be violated again in this age when terrorism is becoming commonplace. Says Beers sadly, "The old rules simply don't apply any more. In fact they appear to no longer exist."

* No such treaty exists between Iran and the U.S.

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