Blackmailing the U.S.

It was an ugly, shocking image of innocence and impotence, of tyranny and terror, of madness and mob rule. Blindfolded and bound, employees of the U.S. embassy in Tehran were paraded last week before vengeful crowds while their youthful captors gloated and jeered. On a gray Sunday morning, students invoking the name of Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini invaded the embassy, overwhelmed its Marine Corps guards and took some 60 Americans as hostages. Their demand: surrender the deposed Shah of Iran, currently under treatment in Manhattan for cancer of the lymphatic system and other illnesses, as the price of the Americans' release. While flatly refusing to submit to such outrageous blackmail, the U.S. was all but powerless to free the victims. As the days passed, nerves became more frayed and the crisis deepened. So far as was known, the hostages had been humiliated but not harmed. Yet with demonstrators chanting "Death to America" outside the compound, there was no way to guarantee that the event would not have a violent ending.

In Washington, there were round-the-clock meetings of the National Security Council. At the State Department's operations center, Iranian specialists frantically tried to keep in touch with Tehran and with the few American officials there who were not in the students' hands. In New York City, the United Nations Security Council convened in special closed session to search for a solution. Said Jimmy Carter to reporters on Thursday: "These last two days have been the worst I've had." Secretary of State Cyrus Vance counseled the nation grimly and correctly: "It is a time not for rhetoric, but for quiet, careful and firm diplomacy."

Meanwhile, a wave of anger spread across the U.S. (see box). On campuses, Iranian flags were torched and the Ayatullah Khomeini was burned in effigy. In Beverly Hills, an anti-Shah demonstration by Iranian students turned into a near riot, with onlookers shouting obscenities at the Iranians. In New York City, at the close of an Iranian student demonstration, a Columbia University undergraduate shouted: "We're gonna ship you back, and you aren't gonna like it! No more booze. No more Big Macs. No more rock music. No more television. No more sex. You're gonna get on that plane at Kennedy, and when you get off in Tehran, you're gonna be back in the 13th century. How you gonna like that?" The Iranians, who stared back glumly, did not respond.

At week's end the impasse remained unresolved. The American hostages, under guard in the embassy, were visited by Swedish, Syrian and other diplomats. Some were allowed to send letters, and 33 reputedly signed a petition supporting their captors' demand that the U.S. extradite the Shah. Khomeini let it be known that he would not be receiving visitors over the weekend, thereby precluding for the moment much chance of direct negotiations for the prisoners' release.

The seizure of the embassy and its staff was an ugly permutation of the acts of political terrorism to which the world has grown increasingly accustomed. Most Iranians detest the Shah for the excesses of his regime, and what they feel was his plundering of their country. Many objected to the Carter Administration's decision to admit him to the U.S. under any circumstances. But the students who attacked the U.S. mission were not political adventurers with a lonely, unpopular cause. They were citizens of a state that maintains diplomatic relations with the U.S. Their invasion of the embassy violated a principle of diplomatic immunity that even the most radical and hostile governments have professed to respect. Most important of all, their action was condoned--if not instigated--by Khomeini, Iran's de facto head of state and a leader who himself had sought and received political asylum in the West.

For the Administration--and for President Carter personally--the seizure of the embassy was a nightmare. At its very worst, it could lead to the deaths of the Americans, and endanger the 300 or so other U.S. citizens still in Iran--all of whom were advised by the State Department to leave the country as expeditiously as possible. However the crisis ends, it seems likely to enhance the impression of American helplessness.

That image is not merely the stuff from which demagoguery is made; it is also the serious preoccupation of political and military analysts who are fearful that an impression of U.S. impotence, however unfair or simplistic, may provoke other probes of the nation's will, other attacks.

In the long run, it could create a willingness on the part of the Soviet Union to risk new adventures, ones with serious world implications.

That is the concern of former Secretary of Defense (and more recently, of Energy) James Schlesinger. In an interview last week with TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, Schlesinger described the fall of the Shah last January and the rise of Khomeini as "a cataclysm for American foreign policy--the first serious revolution since 1917 in terms of world impact." Said Schlesinger: "It is plain that respect for the U.S. would be higher if we didn't just fumble around continuously and weren't half-apologetic about whatever we do. An image of weakness is going to elicit this kind of behavior. Wild as the Ayatullah seems to be, he would not dare to touch the Soviet embassy. The point is that the Soviets are in a position, and of a disposition, not to take such events lying down. The fact of the matter is, as Mr. Nixon used to say, if we want to be a pitiful, helpless giant, we're well on the way to seeming to be one."

As for Carter, he knew that the attack in Iran would inevitably worsen his "leadership" problem and make his quest for a second term more difficult. The circumstances required a restrained response and infinite patience; yet this very stance would reinforce the public's perception of the President as a poor leader. Carter must have recognized the potential damage to his candidacy, but concluded that he had little choice but to act as he did.

As frustration about the plight of the hostages increased, there was a sense that the Administration should do something --anything--to free them. The White House, for sound tactical and strategic reasons, rejected the military options (see box). There were demands for the mass deportation of the 50,000 Iranian students in the U.S.--or at least those who had taken advantage of their visas to picket and demonstrate against the U.S. That was also rejected, since it would blatantly violate U.S. immigration laws. Instead, as it has had to do in a number of other recent crises, the Administration decided on restraint. Initially, the White House asked Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan to intervene. But last Tuesday, after months of trying to steer his country on a rational course, Bazargan resigned in frustration and anger, thus bringing down his government. Carter then designated former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and onetime State Department Iranian Expert William Miller as his personal envoys, both of whom knew Khomeini; the Ayatullah refused to see them. After that, the U.S. consented to try the good offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and still later it called on the U.K. for help.

The crisis began last Sunday, at a time when relations between the U.S. and Iran were, in the words of former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, "lukewarm but improving." Only three days earlier, Prime Minister Bazargan had held a cordial 90-minute meeting with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in Algiers, where both men were attending the 25th anniversary celebration of the start of the Algerian war of independence from France. The Iranians had long since resumed U.S. oil shipments, which had been disrupted by strikes and fighting earlier in the year. The National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) is now selling about 700,000 bbl. a day to the U.S. (compared with 900,000 bbl. a day when the Shah ruled Iran), or about 3.7% of American petroleum needs. The U.S. had resumed the sale of spare military parts as requested by the Tehran government. Last week the Administration quietly halted those shipments.

These improving relations were possible, in part, because the Carter Administration months earlier had quietly persuaded the deposed Shah not to seek permanent sanctuary in the U.S. Though reluctant to do so, the Administration had concluded that the Shah's safety could not be guaranteed against the thousands of Iranian students in the U.S. Nor could Washington realistically hope that the Khomeini-dominated regime would not resort to a campaign of reprisals against the U.S., through either an oil embargo or assaults against Americans in Iran. But last month, after the Administration learned that the Shah was seriously ill, it granted him a temporary visa to visit New York City for medical treatment.

That decision was not taken lightly.

Most Iran specialists in the State Department, buttressed by warnings from the embassy in Tehran, were convinced that the Shah should not be allowed into the U.S. even for emergency medical care. They cited explicit threats from members of the Revolutionary Council as well as from the Iranian embassy in Washington. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Newsom, who is in charge of day-to-day U.S. policy toward Iran, agreed with that assessment. He sought to persuade Secretary of State Cyrus Vance that, regardless of political and humanitarian motives, the granting of even a temporary visa to the Shah would have devastating consequences for American interests in Iran. Vance disagreed, and advised the President to grant the Shah a temporary visa. Carter was glad to make the humanitarian gesture. The Tehran government was assured that the Shah was indeed a sick man, that his visit was not a ruse to seek permanent residency and had no political purpose. Iranian authorities warned that the Shah's medical pilgrimage could have "negative consequences." At the same time, Bazargan's government twice assured Washington that Americans in Iran would be adequately protected against any reprisals.

After the Shah's arrival in New York in late October, Iranian students in the U.S. launched a series of protests. There were daily picket lines outside New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, where the Shah was undergoing treatment (see box). Members of one group chained themselves to railings inside the Statue of Liberty for three hours; others made an abortive raid on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Far more ominous was the fusillade of anti-American rhetoric launched by Ayatullah Khomeini. Denouncing the U.S. as "the great Satan," he compared the relationship between the U.S. and Iran to "the friendship between a wolf and a lamb." U.S. officials asked for, and got, a third assurance from Bazargan that U.S. citizens in Iran would be shielded from attack.

On Sunday, Nov. 4, hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Tehran outside the U.S. embassy, a 27-acre compound surrounded by ten-and twelve-foot brick walls and secured with metal gates. The students, most of whom were unarmed, chanted anti-American slogans and carried banners: DEATH TO AMERICA IS A BEAUTIFUL THOUGHT and GIVE us THE SHAH. At the very hour at which the demonstration was taking place in Tehran, the Ayatullah Khomeini was telling a student in the holy city of Qum, some 80 miles to the south, that foreign "enemies" were plotting against the Iranian revolution. Repeatedly, he charged that the American embassy in his country's capital was "a nest of spies" and "a center of intrigue."

That was all the inspiration the students needed. Just before 11 a.m., someone with a pair of powerful shears managed to break the chain that held together the gates on Taleghani Street, and the crowd surged through. Once inside the compound, some headed for the ambassador's residence, where the servants offered no resistance (there has been no U.S. ambassador in Tehran since William Sullivan left in April). Others tried to take over the chancellery but found it protected with armor plating and grillwork. Using bullhorns, they shouted at the occupants: "Give up and you won't be harmed! If you don't give up, you will be killed!" As the attackers struggled to get inside, other protesters and a crowd of curiosity seekers clambered over the embassy walls and swarmed through the compound.

Inside the two-story brick chancellery building, known to Americans as "Fort Apache" for its special security reinforcements, Marine guards donned flak jackets and gas masks and ordered everyone to the top floor. There, in the ambassador's office, Political Officer Victor Tomseth was on the phone to the embassy's ranking officer, Charge d'Affaires L. Bruce Laingen, who was at the Foreign Ministry. Other embassy officers quickly telephoned other Iranian officials, trying to get help. Just before 1 p.m., Laingen gave Tomseth the order: "Final destruction." Immediately, embassy officers grabbed files from safes and began shredding and burning classified documents.

Finally, after stalling as long as possible, a Marine opened the door, and students rushed in, their eyes moist from tear gas. The students grabbed the masks of the Americans. Said one attacker: "We had the gas for three hours. You can taste it for a while." Then they blindfolded the embassy staff, bound their hands and made them sit on a corridor floor. Soon the students put one of their prisoners on parade, draping his body with a Khomeini poster. One attacker brandished a picture of the Ayatullah that, he claimed, embassy personnel had used as a dart board.

No shots were fired inside the chancellery, which may have disappointed the students. Said one: "If the Marines don't shoot, we take over. If they do, we have our martyr. Either way, we win." Any hopes that embassy officials had once had of preventing attackers from scaling the walls of the compound were abandoned after last February's assault, when Muslim guerrillas easily overpowered a handful of Iranian police guards and the embassy's Marines. The basic defense plan of the embassy was simply to have the Marines hold off any assault long enough for sensitive material to be destroyed.

While their comrades were seizing the chancellery, another group of students was breaking into the heavily secured consulate section, which had just been rebuilt (at a cost of $500,000) to speed up the issuance of visas for thousands of Iranians seeking to go to the U.S. One irony of the situation was that in recent weeks the crowds of Iranians around the embassy had been there to try and get visas to the U.S. Noted the English-language Tehran Times: "Despite the public denunciations, the U.S. embassy has often presented the spectacle of being mobbed one day by visa seekers and the next by demonstrators condemning the U.S."

By 4 p.m. the compound was completely in the hands of the students, who now numbered about 600. Soon afterward the group, which called itself the "Muslim Students of the Imam Khomeini Line," issued "Communique No. 1." It announced that the occupation of "this nest of intrigue" was a protest against "the U.S. offer of asylum to this criminal Shah who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranians." By Monday the streets outside the embassy were jammed with thousands of people. Perhaps the lightest moment in a generally grim day was the arrival of Khomeini's only surviving son, Seyyed Ahmed Khomeini, 36. As he was hoisted over the high wall, Khomeini lost both his white turban and his sandals, causing his aides to plead to the crowd, "Where is the squire's turban?" Then the younger Khomeini announced that he, like his father, supported the embassy takeover. "This is not an occupation," he said. "We have thrown out the occupiers."

Fearful for the safety of the hostages, the State Department refused to release their names, but the identities of most of them gradually became known. Among them were political officers, Marines, code clerks, secretaries, the kinds of people who staff American embassies throughout the world. Tomseth, the second in command, was the ranking captive. Those held included Mike Holland, the burly security chief; Ann Swift, an efficient, Farsi-speaking officer who during the takeover tried over and over to reach the acting Defense Minister; Mike Matrinko, who was a consul in Tabriz last spring when the mission was overrun by revolutionaries; and John Graves, the bearded public affairs officer. Charge d'affaires Laingen stayed at the Foreign Ministry all week, filing protests and trying to keep in touch with the State Department in Washington.

Though the Ayatullah Khomeini's precise role in the embassy affair was not known, it was obvious that the student occupiers looked to him for leadership. Because Khomeini demanded that the British government surrender the Shah's last Prime Minister, Shahpour Bakhtiar, the students on Monday evening briefly occupied the British embassy in Tehran. They left after only six hours, presumably because they had learned what their Imam had not: that Bakhtiar is in exile not in Britain but in France, which also gave asylum to Khomeini before his triumphal return to Iran in February.

Late in the week the student occupiers of the embassy released the contents of two highly sensitive documents that embassy personnel had apparently not had time to destroy. Both seemed to show that the Administration, at least as of last summer, had been considering "the inevitable step" of allowing the Shah to enter the U.S. The first cable, which was sent by Henry Precht, director of the State Department's Office of Iranian Affairs to Laingen in Tehran on Aug. 2, proposed that sometime before January 1980 the U.S. should inform the Iranian government of the "intense pressures for the Shah to come here, pressures which we are resisting despite our traditional open-door policy."

The document noted that it would "help substantially" if the Shah would "renounce his family's claim to the throne." Further, it acknowledged that the admission of the Shah to the U.S. might create security problems for Americans in Tehran, but commented: "We have the impression that the threat to U.S. embassy personnel is less now than it was in the spring." In any case, it continued, the U.S. would make no move toward admitting the Shah until "we have obtained and tested a new and substantially more effective guard force" for the embassy.

The second document, a cable signed by Secretary of State Vance to Laingen last July, also discussed "the Shah's desire to reside in the U.S." It asked Laingen what effect this might have on the safety of Americans in Iran and on U.S. relations with the Iranian government, particularly if the Shah were to renounce the throne and agree to abstain from all political activity while living in the U.S. Vance added: "We understand the key to minimizing the impact of the Shah's mission would be in Bazargan and the [Iranian] government's willingness and ability in such a situation to control and command the security forces guarding our people ..."

On the surface, at least, the documents appeared to confirm the students' fears that Washington was secretly plotting to let the Shah gain sanctuary in the U.S. State Department officials insisted that the cables had been released out of context, and were only two of many informal messages about the problem of the Shah that went back and forth between the embassy and Washington. Last week the White House acknowledged that there had indeed been much correspondence mulling over U.S. policy toward the Shah's sanctuary problem. A top Administration official further conceded to TIME that "Henry Kissinger, [Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman] David Rockefeller and the Council on Foreign Relations have made perfectly clear their desire to have the Shah here." Such pressure not withstanding, the State Department flatly insisted last week that the purloined cables reflected the dialogue and debate of policymakers, and not established policy. The Administration's decision to admit the Shah temporarily for treatment, they said, was based on humanitarian grounds and nothing else.

President Carter was first informed of the seizure of the embassy as he was spending a quiet weekend at Camp David. He conferred by phone several times during the day with top advisers, including Vance and Brzezinski. The President was grim-faced when he arrived at the White House at 8:15 Monday morning; he promised newsmen a statement, but then decided to wait for further developments. Meanwhile, the National Security Council went into almost continuous session. Initially, Washington had been relieved to receive Prime Minister Bazargan's promise that he was ready to help. But Bazargan's position was weak--much weaker, perhaps, than Washington had realized.

He had tried to resign several times after taking office last February, because it was increasingly clear that Khomeini and his followers, not the government, ruled Iran.

In September, Bazargan told a television audience, "The government has been a knife with no blade." In an interview with Italian Journalist Oriana Fallaci, he said: "Khomeini has never been a real politician. He's never had the training needed to face the administrative responsibilities that he now finds on his shoulders. In fact, he doesn't understand government, he doesn't know the techniques for administering a country." On Tuesday, realizing that Khomeini and his advisers were supporting the embassy siege, Bazargan at last resigned. He had been particularly stung when the students charged him with "treason" for having talked to the Americans, a cruel criticism of a politician who had fought the Shah for decades and spent years in prison as a result.

Although he dutifully supported the Ayatullah, Bazargan was strongly devoted to human rights, democracy and moderation. His resignation will reinforce the power of the ruling clergy, many of whom do not share his concern. The Bazargan government will be replaced by the Revolutionary Council, the quasi-legislative body of 15 members that Khomeini appointed while in exile in France last November. During the revolution the council quickly took over the levers of power --the network of komitehs, the revolutionary tribunals that have since ordered the execution of more than 600 people, and the Islamic guards. Now it will take over the government as well. At the same time, an "Assembly of Experts" is drawing up a new constitution that will establish Iran as a theocratic state. The constitution specifies that the state will be ruled by a "just, brave, popularly accepted theologian who is abreast of the times," and who will have the power to dissolve parliament, fire the President, and nullify any legislation he feels is contrary to Islamic law. Khomeini will surely decide that he himself has the necessary qualifications.

Some critics of Khomeini charge that one of his motives in inciting the students was to distract his country's attention from problems that his revolution has been unable to solve. The economy remains a shambles, with constant food shortages. The flight of the middle class continues, as evidenced by the numbers of people who are trying to secure visas to the U.S. and Western Europe.

There is deep-rooted resistance to the Tehran government in areas of the country dominated by Iran's powerful, restless minorities. In northwestern Iran a struggle by the Kurds for autonomy has already claimed hundreds of lives. The government realized last month that a continuing guerrilla war in Kurdistan would be disastrously expensive for Tehran and agreed to send four Cabinet ministers to negotiate with the Kurdish rebels. Khomeini said last week that he wanted the mission to continue. But the danger is that, with Bazargan gone, hard liners on the Revolutionary Council might be tempted to try for a quick military solution, thereby inflaming the Kurds once more. That in turn could lead to interference by neighboring Iraq, which has a substantial and equally restless Kurdish population of its own.

A similar difficulty exists in Khuzistan, center of the Iranian oil industry. The Khomeini regime has alienated the 2 million Shi'ite Arabs of Khuzistan, particularly the oilfield workers, who feel that their strikes made a significant contribution to the overthrow of the Shah. The Iranian oil industry also needs technocratic leadership, which the Ayatullah has been unable or unwilling to provide. The current oil minister, Ah' Akbar Moinfar, last week announced that he would suspend shipments to the U.S. "the moment we get orders from the Imam." In fact, no such order was issued, and U.S. companies said that there seemed to be no disruption in supplies. Iran, however, did notify some customers that they would receive 5% less oil than they expected for the rest of the year. No reason was given. The previous oil administrator, Hassan Nazih, had far more autonomy in carrying out his responsibilities. But he resented the constant intervention of the ayatullahs, said so, and was forced out last September. For good measure, the government issued a summons for Nazih's arrest, but he managed to escape to West Germany. Partly as a result of such political interference and mishandling, Iran's oil production gyrates between 2.3 million bbl. and 3.3 million bbl. per day.

It is no surprise that the Ayatullah and his supporters blame most of their persistent troubles on the deposed Shah --and on his friends abroad. Says Iranian Expert James Bill of the University of Texas: "If there is any issue Khomeini's government has seized upon, it is the Shah, whom they consider to be murderous. When the U.S. let him in, even for humanitarian reasons, it was almost predictable that there would be a tremendous reaction in Iran." In Bill's view, many Iranians still fear that the Shah might be attempting a comeback, with covert U.S. assistance. "To us that seems ridiculous," says Bill, "but we are dealing with Iranians and their perceptions of reality." Indeed the question of the Shah's admission to the U.S. is a contentious issue among Americans as well as Iranians; some argue that he should have been welcomed from the beginning as a fallen ally, others that as a disgraced tyrant he had no place in this country.

The Carter Administration found itself woefully short of ways to deal with the crisis. It quickly ruled out a Mayaguezor Entebbe-style attack as impractical under the circumstances. Nor did the Administration have the option of undertaking any kind of covert action inside Iran that might have tempered the situation. When the Shah fell last January, most of the U.S. intelligence apparatus in Iran fell along with him. Confessed one Washington official: "We have reviewed our assets and our options, and they are precious few."

With so many lives in danger, an obvious first step was to adopt a policy of coolness and flexibility. Toward that end, the White House asked both Congressmen and presidential hopefuls to refrain from inflaming the situation. For the most part the candidates agreed. Early in the week, Republicans Ronald Reagan and John Connally criticized the Administration's handling of the affair, only to draw a rebuke from a third G.O.P. contender, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee. After a briefing session for congressional leaders at the White House, Democratic Senator Scoop Jackson of Washington declared: "Restraint is the order of the day." Teddy Kennedy was one who broke ranks; he criticized the Administration for not having a contingency plan to protect Americans at the embassy.

After Bazargan's government fell, the Administration's next step was to select Clark and Miller to fly to Tehran and negotiate with the Ayatullah. Clark had been an early U.S. supporter of Khomeini and had visited him last January in France; Miller was a former Foreign Service officer in Iran who had opposed Administration policy toward the Shah. The two men had already left for Iran when Khomeini announced that he would not meet with them. The White House told them to remain in Istanbul until the situation became clearer.

Then came a surprising development: an apparent offer by the P.L.O. to try to negotiate for the hostages' lives. P.L.O. Chief Yasser Arafat sent two emissaries, including a close military adviser, Saed Say el (also known as Abu Walid), to Tehran. The State Department said that it welcomed assistance and recalled that the P.L.O. had helped arrange the evacuation of several hundred Americans from Beirut in 1976 during the Lebanese civil war. The Administration was reluctant to depart from U.S. policy toward the P.L.O., namely, that it will not recognize or negotiate with the organization until it acknowledges Israel's right to exist. From the Administration's viewpoint, however, the safety of the hostages was more important than giving the P.L.O. a chance to gain a bit of image-building publicity. If Arafat's emissaries were successful, the Palestinians could boast that they had turned the other cheek by helping Israel's protector and ally; if they failed, the world would at least give them credit for trying. As one Israeli diplomat bitterly observed, "It was a no-lose situation."

The mission did not go well. Fearful of jeopardizing the P.L.O.'s close ties with Khomeini, Sayel announced that he would not be a mediator after all, because the "situation is only related to the revolution in Iran." Some P.L.O. leaders implied that, in the end, Arafat himself might be willing to go to Tehran to try his luck with the stubborn Iranians.

Late in the week, Carter postponed a scheduled trip to Canada because he wanted to stay in close touch with his foreign policy advisers. He called for the meeting of the U.N. Security Council, at which members adopted a resolution expressing concern over the detention of the American diplomats, and he asked several of Iran's Muslim neighbors, including Pakistan, for help. Fresh offers of assistance poured in. The Shah passed the word that he was willing to leave the U.S., leading Egyptian President Anwar Sadat --who had denounced the seizure of the hostages as "a disgrace to Islam"--to offer to send his private jet to fly the ailing monarch to Cairo. Retired Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali announced he would be willing to exchange himself for the prisoners. Said Ali: "I'm a Muslim, and I am known and loved in Iran." Intrigued, State Department officials suggested that Ali try out his offer on the Iranian embassy in Washington. Pope John Paul II dispatched a personal envoy, Pro-Nuncio Annibale Bugnini, to Qum to meet with Khomeini, but the Ayatullah said he could do nothing unless the U.S. extradited the Shah.

Uncertainty and lack of knowledge contributed to the tension. Carter met with relatives of the hostages, tried to reassure them and discussed some of the problems the U.S. was facing. As Scoop Jackson described the dilemma: "Who do you talk to? Who do you deal with? It's a situation of great instability. You don't know what's going to happen from one moment to the next." One White House aide expressed his anxiety in the jargon of the Pentagon's war gamers: "It's a classic case of gaming versus an irrational opponent. As the irrationality approaches 100%, your ability to game nears zero."

Still, by week's end the Administration was feeling a bit more hopeful about the situation. Having avoided any sort of response that might have worked to the disadvantage of the hostages, the U.S. was increasingly counting on growing pressure from the international community and from Iran's own middle class to exert some influence on the religious leaders and the students. One goal of the American diplomatic strategy was to isolate Iran and make it appear as an irrational outlaw in world opinion. Iranian diplomats privately expressed their sense of embarrassment about the embassy seizure to their Arab colleagues, who in turn passed the message on to Washington. But the big question remained: would such pressures have any real impact on the enigmatic Khomeini--the only man who can order the students to release the hostages?

The state of future relations between Iran and the U.S. will depend on 1) the speed and manner in which the hostages are released and 2) the degree to which Washington can convince the volatile Iranians that it is not befriending the Shah and has no wish to restore him to power.

If all goes well, relations could resume after a cooling-off period of a few months.

However the embassy affair ends, it is a sharp reminder of the degree to which the traditional rules of international conduct can no longer be taken for granted.

The world is changing; the unpredictable is becoming the commonplace.

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