Guests of the Ayatollah

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.

“You can’t use that story,” Carter told him.