The Long Ordeal of the Hostages

By John Skow

How vengeance and mutual incomprehension entangled two nations

The mob of surly shouters that formed outside the high walls of the U.S. embassy in Tehran that morning of Sunday, Nov. 4, 1979, did not seem at first to be unusually menacing. The Iranians chanted "Death to America," but demonstrations had periodically rumbled around the embassy before in the ten months since Shah Reza Pahlavi had been forced out of Iran by the Muslim revolution. In February, Marxist guerrillas had seized the embassy and held it for nearly two hours. That time, forces loyal to the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, in what now seems the sourest of ironies, came to the rescue of Ambassador William Sullivan and some 100 embassy employees. Since then the ambassador had left, dependents had been sent home, and the garrison staff that remained had grown accustomed to angry commotion in the streets.

The difference on Nov. 4 was that Khomeini was not a potential rescuer but the spiritual force behind the attack. Two weeks earlier, disregarding State Department warnings of certain reprisal by the Iranians, President Carter had permitted the ailing Shah to enter the U.S. from his temporary hideaway in Mexico to be treated for lymphatic cancer in a New York City hospital. The Ayatullah, then 79, a Muslim mystic and fundamentalist who despised the West and held the U.S. in special hatred for its long support of the Shah, had flown into a pious rage. At his headquarters in the holy city of Qum, 80 miles to the south of Tehran, he told student followers that the U.S. embassy was "a nest of spies" and "a center of intrigue."

The Sunday morning demonstration quickly turned into an occupation. Someone with a boltcutter opened a padlocked gate, and the mob flooded into the 27-acre compound. The Americans inside barricaded themselves in the fortified brick chancellery building, and Marine guards there held the doors shut long enough for officials to destroy some secret embassy documents. Then they surrendered and, with the rest of the Americans, were blindfolded and bound. Their captors identified themselves as students whose allegiance was to Khomeini. Their demand was that the Shah be returned to Iran.

So began the slow and cruel exaction of vengeance. As outrage flared in the U.S., President Carter denounced the occupation as terrorism and flatly rejected extradition of the Shah. Military intervention was also ruled out because of the delicacy of Persian Gulf oil politics, Iran's geography, the awkward truth that the U.S. did not have a commanding military presence in the area and--above all--the danger to the hostages. Their captors threatened executions at once if the U.S. made any military move to liberate them. Carter had no choice but to negotiate. He tried dealing with moderate Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, who seemed to be sympathetic on the day after the seizure of the hostages. Bazargan resigned his office in frustration the day after that, confessing that it was not his government but Khomeini and his followers who held power. Carter dispatched former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former Foreign Service Officer William Miller to meet Khomeini, but before they could reach Iran, the Ayatullah announced that he would not see them.

In the streets outside the embassy, crowds massed each day to howl for the heads of Carter and the Shah. Within the compound the militants settled in for a long occupation, hectoring foreign reporters at press conferences and making a point of hauling garbage wrapped in an American flag. It seemed that they had not decided what to do with the hostages. Simply hold them? Shoot them? Or, as they threatened more often as the days went by, try them as spies?

With an inspired cruelty, the militants refused to say how many hostages they held, leaving in doubt whether any Americans had died in the takeover or had been killed since (in fact, there were no deaths). No one outside the embassy was really sure how many staffers had been in the compound when the siege began, and how many had been elsewhere in the city. Charge d'Affaires Bruce Laingen and two aides had been in the Foreign Ministry on business when the attack began, and they were held there, sinking gradually in status from diplomats to captives. Their number brought press estimates of the hostage population to "about 60"; as it was determined weeks later, the actual figure was 66. State Department vagueness about providing a check list of staffers on the payroll Nov. 4 became understandable two months later, when the Canadian government smuggled home six Americans who had managed to slip away from the U.S. embassy during the confusion of the attack and taken refuge in the Canadian embassy. That gallantry was a rare occasion of unalloyed joy for the frustrated and furious American nation during the hostage agony. Not the least of the pleasure was the outrage of one of the militants at the embassy, who complained, "It's illegal!"

Within a week of the embassy takeover, it was clear that the militants were acting with the approval of the stumbling revolutionary government, and President Carter began to retaliate. He stopped the delivery of $300 million in spare parts for the military arsenal bought from the U.S. by the Shah. Carter ordered the deportation of all Iranian students in the U.S. who were not complying with the terms of their visas, suspended imports of Iranian oil (4% of U.S. consumption), ordered the carrier Midway to steam from the Indian Ocean to the Arabian Sea, and froze $8 billion in Iranian assets deposited in U.S. banks.

The crisis was only two weeks old when Khomeini startled the world by ordering the release of eight black male hostages and five of the seven women held. (The two remaining: Elizabeth Ann Swift, the ranking Foreign Service officer in the embassy during the takeover, and Kathryn Koob, director of the Iran-American Society.) The explanation he gave, that blacks suffer in the U.S. and that Islam does not make war on women, suggested that the release was intended to soften world opinion, not mollify "America, the mother of corruption." A short time later Khomeini was dropping hints that the hostages would indeed be tried (and "executed by firing squad," Deputy Chief Islamic Prosecutor Hassan Ghaffarpour added). Khomeini went on to say that the U.S. President "knows that he is beating an empty drum. Carter does not have the guts to engage in a military operation."

Such crowing kept the Tehran street mobs in a state of agitation and brought the U.S. populace to a mood of rising rage. Carter expelled most of Iran's diplomats from the U.S. in December, and asked the U.N. Security Council to impose economic sanctions on Iran. At the same time, he began to erode Senator Edward Kennedy's supposedly unbeatable lead in the pre-primary-season polls. It was a bad time to be an Iranian student in the U.S. and a good time to be a seller of flags. The citizens of Hermitage, Pa., put up a new flag in the local cemetery for every day of the captivity. Yellow ribbons were tied around trees--old, oak and otherwise--across the country. The White House Christmas tree was left dark except for the star on its top. Bales of Christmas cards were delivered to the hostages, and a group of American clergymen was allowed into the embassy to conduct Christmas services for them.

Meanwhile, the Shah, recuperating in Panama (Mexico had refused to readmit him), was beyond U.S. jurisdiction. In Paris, a nephew of the Shah was assassinated on orders of Ayatullah Sadegh Khalkhali, the revolution's hanging judge. In Iran and in the U.S., people were digging in for a long haul.

In the first weeks of the new year Iran expelled U.S. journalists for unfriendly reporting, and Abolhassan Banisadr, the country's new President, called the hostage crisis "a minor affair, easily settled." Banisadr, who had been Foreign Minister until replaced by the truculent Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, publicly doubted the wisdom of the hostage taking. Now he seemed to be saying, though without much consistency, that the hostages would be released after a five-member U.N. fact-finding commission released its report on the Shah's crimes and the U.S. met Iran's conditions: admission of guilt, recognition of Iran's right to seize the Shah and his assets, and a pledge of noninterference. Ghotbzadeh, on the other hand, was saying that Iran could hold the hostages "more or less forever." The militants repeatedly undercut the diplomacy of both officials. They listened only to Khomeini, who, hospitalized with a weak heart, decreed that the hostage issue would be decided by the Islamic parliament to be elected two months later, in May. The U.N. commission heard and saw grisly evidence of torture by SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, but was not allowed to see the hostages. Sick or not, Khomeini was stage-managing his media event, and he wanted all attention directed at the Shah's crimes, not at the suffering of the hostages. A cautiously worded letter from Hostage William Keough gave his family in Waltham, Mass., a glimpse of the captives' isolation: "We are not privy to news and consequently are unaware of what efforts, if any, are being exerted on our behalf."

Iranian process servers demanded that Panama deport the gaunt and wasted Shah, who flew to Egypt at the invitation of President Anwar Sadat. In the U.S. at the beginning of April, President Carter called a dawn press conference to say that he saw progress in the hostage crisis--undetected by anyone else--and won the Kansas and Wisconsin primaries that day with a boost from his TV announcement. A week later, Carter ordered the remaining Iranian diplomats out of Washington and five other U.S. cities, imposed an economic embargo on Iran, and said that claims of U.S. firms against Iran would be paid from that country's frozen assets. Khomeini said that Carter's moves constituted victory for Iran. In early-round elections for the Majlis (national assembly), Banisadr's followers did poorly, and hard-line right-wingers of the Islamic Republican Party predominated. Common Market Foreign Ministers, meeting in Lisbon, condemned the hostage taking but delayed until May the imposition of reluctantly agreed-to economic sanctions against Iran. Carter's mood remained grim; he imposed a ban against U.S. travel to Iran and hinted that little remained for the U.S. except military action. Mrs. Barbara Timm, mother of Hostage Kevin Hermening, defied the travel ban, flew to Tehran and managed to see her son, but was not granted the audience she wanted with Khomeini.

The hostage mess had turned brackish, and worse was to come: at 7 a.m. on Friday, April 25, Carter told the nation that a U.S. military raid to rescue the hostages had been aborted, leaving the burned bodies of eight servicemen behind in the Iranian desert. In the next days, Americans gloomily sifted the rubble of their hopes and the nation's self-respect. Why had three of eight Sea Stallion helicopters failed? What was wrong with our equipment, or our nerve? Had there been a reasonable chance of success or was Carter's raid an ill-advised act of desperation? Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed any military rescue attempt from the beginning, resigned. Carter replaced him with Senator Edmund Muskie. In Iran, Ayatullah Khalkhali crowed over Carter's defeat, as authorities with knives picked at the bodies of the dead American raiders before television cameras. Iran and the U.S. haggled over the return of the bodies, parodying in a grisly way the endless dreary bickering, now six months stale, over the release of the hostages themselves.

The failed raid left the U.S. with few useful cards to play. It may also have been the moment at which the electorate, almost subliminally, began to harden in the view that Carter was hopeless. Yet he continued to roll over Kennedy in the primaries and went on to win renomination by his party. Republican Ronald Reagan continued to hammer away at the Administration's foreign policy failings without dwelling on the desert debacle. But it was becoming clear that Carter's handling of the entire hostage crisis was perceived by many voters as a disaster.

In Iran, Banisadr insisted that preoccupation with the hostages was preventing his nation from dealing with its own considerable troubles (30% unemployment, 50% inflation, low oil exports, a nasty border squabble with Iraq), but he could not persuade the newly convened Majlis to act. The summer dragged on. Ramsey Clark defied Carter's half-hearted travel ban and attended a conference in Tehran on "Crimes of America." The militants released Richard Queen, a hostage suffering from multiple sclerosis. On July 27 the Shah died, an event that months before might have been useful but now seemed almost irrelevant to the crisis. Richard Nixon was the only notable American at his Cairo funeral.

In early September, Secretary of State Muskie sent a letter asking for the hostages' release to Mohammed Ali Raja'i, the devout Khomeini follower who was Iran's new Prime Minister. The letter was the first direct communication between the governments since before the April raid. Khomeini replied, giving conditions for the hostages' release, and for the first time did not mention the necessity of an American apology. The Ayatullah demanded merely the return of the Shah's fortune, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, cancellation of U.S. claims against Iran, and a pledge of noninterference. But a day later, as the Majlis considered appointing a commission to study the hostage issue, the speaker of the assembly, Muslim Hard-Liner Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, insisted that the U.S. apologize for its long support of the Shah.

Carter ruled out any admission of guilt in strong terms, but with the election campaign going poorly for him and with the outbreak of all-out war between Iran and Iraq over an old border dispute, there was severe pressure on both sides to end the hostage ordeal. Carter said that the U.S. was strictly neutral in the war but hinted that spare military parts might be delivered to Iran if the hostages were let go. Prime Minister Raja'i unexpectedly flew to New York and complained to the U.N. that Iraq's belligerence was inspired by the U.S. But the fact was that Iran needed its spare parts and its frozen assets, which Carter seemed ready to deliver. Despite eruptions from the fundamentalists, who still hungered for a spy trial, the Majlis voted on Nov. 2 to accept Khomeini's conditions.

That approval came two days before the U.S. presidential election (which was also, by another sour irony, the first anniversary of the hostages' seizure). The Majlis is too arrogant, chauvinistic and factional a body to have timed its crucial decision to help Carter, a man hysterically despised by Muslim fundamentalists in any case. But it seemed that way to campaign officials on both sides. Hours after the Majlis vote, early Sunday morning by U.S. time, hostage families were telephoned by the State Department and told to be prepared for a breakthrough. Many of them made ready to fly to Frankfurt and meet the hostages at their presumed arrival point, an Air Force base in Wiesbaden, West Germany. Then, as had happened so many times before, expectations sank back to earth. The Majlis said that the hostages would be released in groups as conditions were met, and Muskie rejected any piecemeal return. But Carter did agree in principle to meet Khomeini's four conditions, to the extent that they were consistent with U.S. law.

After the wreckage of his election defeat--in Iran a day of public rejoicing over the anniversary of the embassy occupation--negotiation continued. A considerable difficulty, it was clear, would be the disentangling of the Iranian assets from legitimate claims already being pressed in U.S. courts. Weeks went by as progress seemed stalled again. DEATH TO CARTER slogans on the embassy walls were painted over. DOWN WITH REAGAN slogans were put in their place. Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher conferred repeatedly with Algerian go-betweens on the Iranians' fears and sticking points.

On their second Christmas in captivity, the hostages were manipulated by Iran's propagandists in a display that was both maddening and somewhat comforting for their relatives at home. TV films were transmitted to the U.S. over five days. Initially, only 16 hostages were shown, inspiring fear for the well-being of the others. Then ten more appeared. Finally 43 were counted, many reading messages to their families. Some of the Americans appeared wooden, some tearful, others more relaxed, but, understandably, the strain showed. More reassuringly, an Algerian diplomat claimed he had visited all 52 over the holiday.

A weary Jimmy Carter remained stubbornly determined to wipe out his obligation to the hostages before he left the White House. Finally, he did manage to set the stage for ending the grotesque ritual of vengeance, frustration and mutual incomprehension that had done so much damage to each country.

--By John Skow

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.