Dominating American Thought and Policy

Others Who Stood In The Spotlight

His blindfolded face has become a symbol of both personal and national agony -- the continuing ordeal of the 52 American hostages remaining in Iran, and the grinding frustration of a U.S. that has been unable to win their release from almost 14 months in captivity. But to the millions who see his often published picture, he is a man without identity, the unknown hostage. The State Department will not disclose his name, for fear of upsetting his already distraught family.

That too is symbolic: as individual human beings, the hostages have all but vanished from the world's sight. No outsider has seen the main group of hostages since April 6, when a number of American clergymen held Easter services in the seized U.S. embassy. There has been no reliable word on how they are being treated since July, when the Iranians released Richard Queen, who is suffering from multiple sclerosis. Queen reported that for a while after the embassy seizure the hostages were often bullied, and even threatened with execution, by their militant captors, but that early this year the militants eased off and the hostages' main problem was coping with the boredom of sitting in small rooms for endless hours with nothing to do. It is no longer known where they are being held. They were said to have been dispersed from the embassy to 15 cities throughout Iran last spring, and are now, so the Iranians boast, in Tehran hotels. The militants say they have turned over the hostages to the Iranian government, but the government has never confirmed it.

Out of sight, however, in this case is the reverse of out of mind: never before has a largely anonymous group so dominated American thought --and policy. Jimmy Carter confessed that early in the year he had been obsessed with the hostages' fate, and his first words when the Iran-Iraq war broke out concerned not only the threat to world oil supplies and the menace of expanding Soviet influence in the Middle East, but also the possibility of trading military spare parts for the hostages' release.

All year long, efforts to win that release were frustrated. A U.N. initiative broke down in March, and Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini said the fate of the hostages would be decided by the Iranian parliament. He later insisted on an American "apology" for "crimes" against his nation. A military rescue attempt in April left eight dead in flaming wreckage on the Iranian desert and an impression of U.S. incompetence and impotence in millions of minds abroad--and at home. When at last the Iranian parliament on Nov. 2 voted to set conditions for the release that looked to be at least negotiable, its act only reminded many Americans of the bitter humiliation of the preceding twelve months. Far from helping Carter, the news added force to the Reagan landslide two days later.

Just before Christmas there seemed to be new hope. Negotiations focused on technical financial questions of returning frozen Iranian assets, canceling U.S. claims against Iran and disposition of the late Shah's wealth--if it can be found --that should be solvable. But Iran's high-handed demand that the U.S. deposit $24 billion in Algeria raised anew the question of whether the often irrational and always faction-torn Tehran government can summon the political will to free the captives. After so many disappointments, few Americans will believe that it can until all the hostages are actually on a plane that has cleared Iranian airspace.

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