Burruss and Meadows explained how their men would choose an hour soon after midnight to storm the compound over or through the back walls, with the aid of a high-flying AC-130 gunship, which could lay down curtains of intense fire with great precision on the streets around the embassy. The raiding parties would be wearing night-vision devices, which would give them a major advantage as they took down the various buildings in the compound and rounded up the hostages. They had only a vague notion of where in the compound the diplomats were being held, most of it gathered from close satellite surveillance and TV reports; the CIA at that point had nothing to offer.
As the joint chiefs questioned and discussed the option, General Robert Barrow, the Marine Corps commandant, said he was uncomfortable with the whole plan, which prompted General E. C. Meyer, the army chief of staff, a hard-bitten character who was sitting with his feet up on the table, to quip: “These are soldiers, not marines.”
Accepting or rejecting this emergency plan was not an issue, it was the
At this point, even the soldiers planning a rescue mission doubted it would ever be undertaken, and not only because it was so difficult and unlikely to succeed. As frustrating as the embassy takeover was to Americans, it was clearly a provocation that called for a measured response. It seemed likely that the seizure had taken Iranian authorities by surprise as much as it had Americans, and it made sense to allow time for the confusion of powers in that country to sort out its response. At a meeting of the National Security Council in the White House that morning, Carter had approved the idea of sending Ramsey Clark and William Miller to Tehran with their carefully composed letter, but on his way out of the room the president vented his impatience.
“By the way, I’m tired of seeing those bastards holding our people referred to as ‘students,’” he said. “They should be referred to as ‘terrorists,’ or ‘captors,’ or something that accurately describes what they are.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jody Powell, his press secretary. After the president left the room, Powell mused, “How about ‘Islamic thugs’?”
Any hope of the higher powers in Iran backing away from the embassy takeover dimmed further when Khomeini gave another speech in praise of the students.
“When we face plots, our young people cannot wait around,” he said. “Our young people must foil these plots…. We are facing underground treason, treason devised in these very embassies, mainly by the Great Satan, America…. They must be put in their place and return this criminal to us as soon as possible. If they do not, we shall do what is necessary.”
Predictably, public endorsements had quickly followed up and down the emerging Tehran establishment, from Ayatollah Mohammed Behesti to Ayatollah Husayn-ali Montazari, the spiritual leader of Tehran. Close behind came news that Prime Minister Bazargan and his entire cabinet had resigned. Given their precarious status since news of the meeting with Brzezinski in Algiers, they were in no position to buck the tide. They lacked the power to evict the students anyway. Khomeini had made efforts to talk Bazargan into staying on—the beleaguered prime minister had tried to resign three times earlier that year as it had become increasingly apparent that the new Iran would be ruled directly from Qom—but had been induced to stay. Not this time. He told Ahmad Khomeini, the imam’s son, “My existence as prime minister has become useless in this country.”
In less than forty-eight hours, a group of students from the big universities in Tehran had engineered a mini–coup d’etat. The takeover of the U.S. embassy had ignited a great storm of anti-Americanism and anti- secularism, which swept aside any prospect of a conventional, Western-style nation. Religious conservatives were going to shape Iran’s future, not the secular nationalists, socialists, and communists who had dominated the movement’s educated class. The young leftist cleric who had “advised” the students, Mousavi Khoeniha, had foreseen the possibility of this happening but had never guessed that it might work so well, and so fast.
Ibrahim Yazdi left his office at the Foreign Ministry that day feeling defeated and angry. He was angry at the United States for historically bad policies in his country, and for the colossally insensitive and unnecessary blunder of allowing the shah to travel to New York; why couldn’t the doctors have gone to see him? Yazdi didn’t know what was going to happen, but even beyond the danger of provoking the United States he was convinced that taking diplomats hostage was going to do lasting damage to his country. Since when was national policy set by secret societies on college campuses?
He was not that angry with Khomeini. Despite having been personally accused of treason by the more rabble-rousing elements of the religious camp for meeting with Brzezinski, Yazdi was comfortably ensconced in Khomeini’s good graces; he had served him tirelessly during his years in the United States and in Paris during the year before his triumphal return to Iran. The imam urged Yazdi to take a position with the now ruling Revolutionary Council (as Bazargan did), but the departing foreign minister declined. He didn’t trust the mullahs; behind closed doors they said one thing and publicly they did another. Instead, he accepted an appointment as Khomeini’s special emissary to resolve political disputes in outlying provinces. He knew that the old man was well intentioned, but he was also largely ignorant of the outside world and vulnerable to manipulation. When he had the imam’s ear, as he had briefly the previous day, Yazdi could convince him that holding diplomats hostage was not something that a responsible government did, that the world of diplomacy was vitally important for all countries; at its best it preserved options in a time of crisis, it prevented misunderstandings, and when circumstances seemed hopeless it sometimes provided a peaceful way out. Violating the protocols of statesmanship so blatantly would withdraw Iran from the community of nations and would deprive it of this essential tool for interacting with the rest of the world. Such arguments appealed to Khomeini’s humility and wisdom, asking him to look past the passions of the moment toward Iran’s long-term interests. But he knew the ambitious mullahs around Khomeini had their powerful ways of appealing to him, too. They would argue that severing ties with the Western world was critical for ensuring the success of the revolution and in creating a pure Islamist state. They fed him the stories about American plots, some of which Yazdi himself believed were true. There were those in Khomeini’s religious inner circle in Qom who were sincere, but others were like power-hungry courtiers anywhere. They were opportunists, and in this embassy seizure they saw their chance. Yazdi counted Ahmad, the imam’s son and heir apparent, as one of those. There was no mistaking who had the imam’s ear last.
In his speech that day, Khomeini called the takeover “a second revolution, more glorious than the first.”
In Washington all this removed the best hope for an early resolution. At a second meeting of the National Security Council that afternoon, General Jones presented the rescue option he had heard from Burruss that morning with his own pessimistic assessment of its chances. Ramsey Clark and William Miller flew from Washington to Greece, and then to Turkey, awaiting permission to enter Iran and deliver the letter crafted so carefully by Precht and White House officials. Their mission stalled there, as they waited for confirmation that they would be welcomed in Tehran. NBC’s Richard Valeriani, who had been sitting on the story, finally aired it on the
As Hamilton Jordan left the White House that evening, November 6, he noticed a big crowd outside the Iranian embassy on Massachusetts Avenue.
“Let our people go!” they chanted, as passing cars honked in approval.
Jordan was struck by the contrast: the powers in Iran applauding the seizure of America’s embassy, while in D.C. police had carefully roped off an area around the Iranian embassy and were busily protecting it from angry Americans.
18. Yes, and This Is for You
The hostages at the embassy had no idea what effect their kidnapping was having around the world. They lived in enforced silence, cut off from anything outside the four walls of whatever room held them. With mobs
