On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Now they had to take a look at the real-life jail.

It was time to go to Tehran.

Simons told Stauffer he wanted to meet with Perot again.

3____

While the rescue team was in training, President Carter got his last chance of preventing a bloody revolution in Iran.

And he blew it.

This is how it happened ...

Ambassador William Sullivan went to bed content on the night of January 4 in his private apartment within the large, cool residence in the Embassy compound at the comer of Roosevelt and Takht-e-Jamshid avenues in Tehran.

Sullivan's boss, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, had been busy with the Camp David negotiations all through November and December, but now he was back in Washington and concentrating on Iran--and boy, did it show. Vagueness and vacillation had ended. The cables containing Sullivan's instructions had become crisp and decisive. Most importantly, the United States at last had a strategy for dealing with the crisis: they were going to talk to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

It was Sullivan's own idea. He was now sure that the Shah would soon leave Iran and Khomeini would return in triumph. His job, he believed, was to preserve America's relationship with Iran through the change of government, so that when it was all over, Iran would still be a stronghold of American influence in the Middle East. The way to do that was to help the Iranian armed forces to stay intact and to continue American military aid to any new regime.

Sullivan had called Vance on the secure telephone line and told him just that. The U.S. should send an emissary to Paris to see the Ayatollah, Sullivan had urged. Khomeini should be told that the main concern of the U.S. was to preserve the territorial integrity of Iran and deflect Soviet influence; that the Americans did not want to see a pitched battle in Iran between the army and the Islamic revolutionaries; and that once the Ayatollah was in power, the U.S. would offer him the same military assistance and arms sales it had given the Shah.

It was a bold plan. There would be those who would accuse the U.S. of abandoning a friend. But Sullivan was sure it was time for the Americans to cut their losses with the Shah and look to the future.

To his intense satisfaction, Vance had agreed.

So had the Shah. Weary, apathetic, and no longer willing to shed blood in order to stay in power, the Shah had not even put up a show of reluctance.

Vance had nominated, as his emissary to the Ayatollah, Theodore H. Eliot, a senior diplomat who had served as economic counselor in Tehran and spoke Farsi fluently. Sullivan was delighted with the choice.

Ted Eliot was scheduled to arrive in Paris in two days' time, on January 6.

In one of the guest bedrooms at the ambassadorial residence, Air Force General Robert 'Dutch' Huyser was also going to bed. Sullivan was not as enthusiastic about the Huyser Mission as he was about the Eliot Mission. Dutch Huyser, the deputy commander (under Haig) of U.S. forces in Europe, had arrived yesterday to persuade Iranian generals to support the new Bakhtiar government in Tehran. Sullivan knew Huyser. He was a fine soldier, but no diplomat. He spoke no Farsi and he did not know Iran. But even if he had been ideally qualified, his task would have been hopeless. The Bakhtiar government had failed to gain the support even of the moderates, and Shahpour Bakhtiar himself had been expelled from the centrist National Front party merely for accepting the Shah's invitation to form a government. Meanwhile, the army, which Huyser was trying futilely to swing to Bakhtiar, continued to weaken as thousands of soldiers deserted and joined the revolutionary mobs in the streets. The best Huyser could hope for was to hold the army together a little longer, while Eliot in Paris arranged for the peaceful return of the Ayatollah.

If it worked it would be a great achievement for Sullivan, something any diplomat could be proud of for the rest of his life: his plan would have strengthened his country and saved lives.

As he went to sleep, there was just one worry nagging at the back of his mind. The Eliot Mission, for which he had such high hopes, was a State Department scheme, identified in Washington with Secretary of State Vance. The Huyser Mission was the idea of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor. The enmity between Vance and Brzezinski was notorious. And at this moment Brzezinski, after the summit meeting in Guadeloupe, was deep- sea fishing in the Caribbean with President Carter. As they sailed over the clear blue sea, what was Brzezinski whispering in the President's ear?

The phone woke Sullivan in the early hours of the morning.

It was the duty officer, calling from the communications vault in the Embassy Building just a few yards away. An urgent cable had arrived from Washington. The Ambassador might want to read it immediately.

Sullivan got out of bed and walked across the lawns to the Embassy, full of foreboding.

The cable said that the Eliot Mission was canceled.

The decision had been taken by the President. Sullivan's comments on the change of plan were not invited. He was instructed to tell the Shah that the United States government no longer intended to hold talks with the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Sullivan was heartbroken.

This was the end of America's influence in Iran. It also meant that Sullivan personally had lost his chance of distinguishing himself as Ambassador by preventing a bloody civil war.

He sent an angry message back to Vance, saying the President had made a gross mistake and should reconsider.

He went back to bed, but he could not sleep.

In the morning another cable informed him that the President's decision would stand.

Wearily, Sullivan made his way up the hill to the palace to tell the Shah.

The Shah appeared drawn and tense that morning. He and Sullivan sat down and drank the inevitable cup of tea. Then Sullivan told him that President Carter had canceled the Eliot Mission.

The Shah was upset. 'But why have they canceled it?' he said agitatedly.

'I don't know,' Sullivan replied.

'But how do they expect to influence those people if they won't even talk to them?'

'I don't know.'

'Then what does Washington intend to do now?' asked the Shah, throwing up his hands in despair.

'I don't know,' said Sullivan.

4___

'Ross, this is idiotic,' Tom Luce said loudly. 'You're going to destroy the company and you're going to destroy yourself.'

Perot looked at his lawyer. They were sitting in Perot's office. The door was closed.

Luce was not the first to say this. During the week, as the news had spread through the seventh floor, several of Perot's top executives had come in to tell him that a rescue team was a foolhardy and dangerous notion, and he should drop the idea. 'Stop worrying,' Perot had told them. 'Just concentrate on what you have to do.'

Tom Luce was characteristically vociferous. Wearing an aggressive scowl and a courtroom manner, he argued his case as if a jury were listening.

'I can only advise you on the legal situation, but I'm here to tell you that this rescue can cause more problems, and worse problems, than you've got now. Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to break!'

'Try,' said Perot.

'You'll have a mercenary army--which is illegal here, in Iran, and in every country the team would pass through. Anywhere they go they'd be liable to criminal penalties and you could have ten men in jail instead of