“You can play with words all you want,” warned Carter. “But I am going to have to be able to stand up in front of the American people and defend whatever statement I make.”
Despite his misgivings, the president was willing to proceed. He was so hopeful that the process would lead to the hostages’ release that he wrote a note to Jordan prior to the scheduled meeting with Ghotbzadeh:
“If, at any time, the Government of Iran desires to release the American hostages at an earlier date than called for in the mutually agreed plan, the Government of Iran has my personal assurance that the United States will abide by all the terms of that plan.” Carter was fully on board.
Jordan flew to Paris on a Concorde with Henry Precht, with tickets they purchased themselves in order to keep the secret meeting off the books. Wearing a disguise—a wig, false mustache, and glasses—Jordan arrived at Villalon’s luxurious Paris apartment, and shortly after midnight on Sunday, February 17, he was joined by Iran’s embattled foreign minister himself, whose swarthy, thick, pugilistic features looked worn. He had dark lines under his small deep-set eyes. Jordan had been coached by the intermediaries to view Ghotbzadeh as a “rug merchant,” one who liked nothing better than to haggle. The two adversaries chatted amiably; Jordan told him that he was “honored” to be meeting with him. Ghotbzadeh was curious about the Concorde, which he had never flown on.
“We must be sure to do it while we can charge it to our governments,” said Jordan. “It’s very expensive!”
Ghotbzadeh emphasized that the meeting remain secret. If it became public, the foreign minister warned, “First I would lose my job and then I would lose my head!”
Jordan tried to ingratiate himself by telling the Iranian, on behalf of himself and the president, that it would be “terribly helpful” if he would explain the origins of the revolution and help sort out the present situation in Tehran. He listened as Ghotbzadeh recited the familiar story of America’s subversions, dividing his remarks into three periods, 1900–1953, 1953–1978, and the present. The foreign minister spoke reverently about Khomeini and the revolution, with what Jordan later called a “mystical” passion, and while he said he could not condone what the students had done, he regarded it as a small thing compared to the crimes of America and the shah. Ghotbzadeh spoke of the hostility between the United States and Iran sadly and, as Jordan would note later in a handwritten memo to Carter (in which he referred to Ghotbzadeh only as “Mr. S.”), “[with] regret that things between us had gone so far and were in such a mess.” Jordan tried to move the conversation past these differences. He asked for Ghotbzadeh’s opinion of Carter, and when the foreign minister complained that the president seemed to poorly understand his country, Jordan defended his boss, arguing that Carter had resisted pressures to intervene in Iran during the revolution and had ignored demands to respond militarily to the seizure of the embassy. The foreign minister acknowledged that the president had shown restraint.
“Now, let’s talk about the hostages,” Ghotbzadeh said. “I am in a better mood to talk about them since you have heard our case.”
Jordan asked about Michael Metrinko, the one American hostage who had not been seen or heard from since the day of the takeover. Ghotbzadeh said he did not know anything about Metrinko in particular but assured Jordan that all of the captive Americans were still alive. Then he confided, “Only I can solve this.”
Jordan asked how, and Ghotbzadeh’s big face produced a small, conspiratorial smile.
“It is easy to resolve the crisis,” he said. “All you have to do is kill the shah.”
“You’re kidding,” said Jordan, flabbergasted. After all the weeks of negotiations with his emissaries, after hammering out a complex multistepped plan to sort out this mess in a way acceptable to both sides, Ghotbzadeh suddenly introduces the idea of state-sponsored assassination?
“I am very serious, Mr. Jordan,” he said. “The shah is in Panama now. I am not talking about anything dramatic. Perhaps the CIA can give him an injection or something to make it look like a natural death. I’m only asking you to do to the shah what the CIA did to thousands of innocent Iranians over the past thirty years!”
Jordan let the baseless charge against the CIA go and addressed the idea of assassination.
“That’s impossible,” he said. “It’s totally out of the question.”
Ghotbzadeh went into a long explanation of why Iran “hated” both the United States and the Soviet Union, and speculated about being killed himself by either an American or a Russian spy. He eventually came around to discussing the existing plan, and (having apparently dropped the idea of bumping off the shah) suggested that if Carter stuck to the outline drawn up by Bourget and Villalon, the hostages would be released “soon.”
“What is soon?” Jordan asked.
“Weeks,” he said. He assured Jordan that the Iranian government, meaning the Revolutionary Council, would abide by its promises.
“What about the Ayatollah Khomeini?” Jordan asked.
Ghotbzadeh said that the council had approved the plan unanimously, despite some objections from its cleric members, and that he had briefed the imam in Qom.
“And what was his response?” Jordan asked.
“The imam does not often respond,” said Ghotbzadeh. “He listened to our explanation and nodded…. If he had objected to our proposal, he would have said so.”
Thus the fate of this effort hung on the cryptic nod of the sharp-featured, white-bearded, black-turbaned prophet. The two men discussed at some length the future relations between their countries after the hostages were released. Ghotbzadeh promised that the new Iran would prove to be an even better ally against the Soviets than the old.
In his memo to the president about the meeting, Jordan didn’t mention Ghotbzadeh’s suggestion of assassinating the shah—he referred to it only as “Point #1,” and wrote, “I’ll tell you about this in person.” In assessing the meeting, he wrote, “At best, Mr. S. is a deeply committed revolutionary, dedicated to the survival of that revolution and to the integrity and independence of Iran. His ego is enormous, but his devotion to the Imam is genuine. His commitment to the revolution makes the Soviet threat the dominant political concern in his life. At worst, Mr. S. is a devious person whose only source of power is the Imam. Now that the Imam’s health is in question, he is engaged in a number of activities (hostage negotiations, anti-Soviet rhetoric) that he perceives as being in his own best interests. The truth about Mr. S. is probably somewhere in between, but either way, we should use his present attitudes to our benefit.”
Jordan clearly believed the first characterization of Ghotbzadeh to be true. He made no mention in his memo of the ambiguity in Khomeini’s reported response to the plan. He left Paris emphasizing to Bourget and Villalon that Carter would not “apologize” for America’s actions in Iran, and that the hostages could stay in Iran “another ten months or ten years” before the president would make a statement that dishonored his country.
The meeting with Ghotbzadeh, which would have been electrifying news, remained a secret, but the mood of optimism about the hostage crisis continued to build for the rest of the month. All signs pointed to the hostages’ imminent release. A Kuwaiti newspaper reported that a deal had been struck. Ghotbzadeh publicly suggested that if the hostage takers refused to cooperate with the government, then military force might be used by Iranian authorities to retake the embassy. Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Mansour Farhang, said that the students had begun “to lose credibility with the Iranian people,” and had “gone beyond their task.” For their part, the students continued to insist that the hostages would be released only when the imam ordered them released.
Word of the solution Jordan had worked out with Bourget and Villalon began to leak. No one had the particulars, or word that the president’s chief of staff had actually met with Iran’s foreign minister, but the plan’s general outline became public, and the expectant mood in the White House was impossible to hide. A peaceful solution to the standoff not only would bring home the American hostages, it would trump Carter’s critics, particularly his Democratic challenger Kennedy, and no doubt boost both his approval ratings and his standings in the presidential race.
In keeping with the secret protocol, Carter announced on February 13 that he would support the creation of a UN commission to study the crimes of the shah, and announced at the same time that there were “positive signs” about the hostage standoff. To savvy Washington watchers, there was clearly a connection. The president’s surprising retreat on the commission, which would certainly reach conclusions critical of the United States, coupled with this suddenly optimistic assessment, strongly suggested that a deal had been struck. As anticipated, the good news eclipsed criticism of the concession.
One way that would-be important men advertise their proximity to power is to predict events. In Tehran, Ayatollah Mohammed Behesti, secretary of the Revolutionary Council, declared that the crisis would be resolved soon, and Secretary-General Waldheim, after announcing formation of a five-man commission—a French lawyer,
