The Aftermath Freedom Is the Best Revenge

By Bruce W. Nelan

Although the American hostages were innocent bystanders in the Middle East, their agonizing captivity became the nation's ordeal. They were kidnapped only because they were Americans, men who represented what Iran and its Shi'ite proteges called "the Great Satan," and their fate became an issue for all Americans, especially for three U.S. Presidents.

No one knew how to set them free. Jimmy Carter publicly displayed his anguish about the Americans seized in the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, and his failure to get them out helped make him a one-term President. Ronald Reagan tried to strike secret deals with so-called moderates in Iran to free the captives in Lebanon and almost wrecked his presidency. George Bush throttled back on public expressions of concern but encouraged diplomatic pressure on the sponsors of state terrorism in the Middle East. The U.S., he insisted, would make no deals for hostages. But he was willing to let U.N. officials and Israel arrange swaps with the kidnappers, and he did make small concessions, like returning some Iranian funds, to improve the climate.

That turned out to be the right, or at least the successful, policy. But it is difficult to see that any U.S. initiatives on the hostages' behalf actually forced their release. In the end, the faceless Shi'ite kidnappers under the Hizballah umbrella in Lebanon were simply overtaken by events. The world around them changed so dramatically that Iran and Syria, their main supporters, no longer found them or their captives useful. Some of the lessons gleaned from years of terrorism and hostage taking:

The forces at play were beyond American control. The surge of Islamic fundamentalism that carried the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini to power struck a resonant chord with Shi'ite organizations in Lebanon. So did the Iranian mobs that stormed into the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 hostages for 444 days.

Israel's invasion and subsequent occupation of the self-proclaimed security zone nine miles deep into Lebanese territory uprooted Shi'ite towns and sparked the creation of Hizballah, the radical Party of God, built up with Iranian advisers and money. Its proclaimed mission: to drive the Israelis and their Lebanese auxiliaries of the South Lebanon Army out of the country. The U.S. became a target when it moved Marines into Lebanon to support the Israeli-backed Christian government in Beirut, reinforcing Hizballah's belief that Israel's strength came from the aid and political support the Jewish state got from America. Said one of Terry Anderson's Islamic Jihad captors only two months ago: "The Israeli invasion was financed by America, which also supplied the weapons."

The next step was obvious. Hostage taking had proved spectacularly successful in getting U.S. attention in Iran, and it was an age-old Lebanese tradition that became even more popular when sectarian civil war broke out in 1975.

Kidnapping Westerners -- not just Americans were in peril -- was easy. After a while, holding them became an end in itself for the extremist groups, earning them prestige among their allies and rivals, and money from Iran.

Rescue attempts are emotionally satisfying but rarely successful. Carter's catastrophe in the Iranian desert cast a shadow over later U.S. plans. A scheme for rescuing the 39 passengers and crew hijacked aboard TWA Flight 847 in 1985 was bungled or never got off the ground.

Not that the U.S. did not think about rescuing the hostages. In the summer of 1985, Lieut. Colonel Oliver North and Amiram Nir, the Israeli government's counterterrorism adviser, recruited 40 Lebanese Druze and paid them $1 million to help mount a rescue bid that never came off. The problem was a lack of good intelligence. The Hizballah groups were so secretive and fanatic that Western agents could never get close enough to them to keep track of precisely where they were holding the hostages. But Syria could have helped, according to a Western intelligence report that reached the Israeli government. The report claimed that whenever and wherever the hostages were moved, "the Syrians get an update." The report further claimed that Syrian President Hafez Assad asked his close aides to determine whether it was in his interest to help the Americans get their hostages freed. The unanimous recommendation was no, but Syria might profitably help France retrieve its captives.

Vengeance is not an option. There were, theoretically, other tough-minded approaches. The U.S. could have taken reciprocal hostages, as Israel did, or attacked the sponsoring states, as it did when it bombed Libya in 1986. Such actions might have done nothing to free the hostages and would only have complicated life for Washington. Taking hostages is against the law, and if it came out that the U.S. or its agents were engaging in criminal behavior, the domestic and international backlash would be severe. It also would hand the advantage to the terrorists: it would be easier for them to seize more and more unsuspecting civilians than for Western intelligence agencies to identify and locate Hizballah members for effective reprisals.

Similar objections apply to bombing a Lebanese town or a training camp in the Bekaa Valley. Israel does it, of course, but Israel is at war with Lebanon. It would be diplomatically and domestically impolitic for Washington if its bombs landed on anyone but active terrorists. And bombing targets in Iran or Syria would have horrified most Arabs and soured U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The U.S. attack on Libya has proved effective in curbing Muammar Gaddafi's terrorist adventures, but the strike was not cost free. It led directly to the execution of U.S. hostage Peter Kilburn and two British captives. And Washington now fingers Libya for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

Some politicians in the Middle East did think the U.S. should have threatened Ayatullah Khomeini with force. A French intelligence report, based partly on testimony of Hizballah defectors and Iranian opposition members, claimed that every act of terrorism committed by Iranian or pro-Iranian agents during 1986 was personally approved by the Ayatullah.

That same year Amiram Nir posed as an American diplomat at a meeting with an Iranian official. According to a tape recording of their conversation, the Iranian told Nir he should analyze Khomeini's character. "If he is faced with someone who is strong," said the Iranian, "he retreats 100 steps. You were softies with him."

Asked where the U.S. should use its muscle, the Iranian replied, "Lebanon. If you tell him, 'You have to release all the hostages in Lebanon within five days, otherwise we are going to launch a military strike against you,' and not only that, you'll do it. You have to show you are strong." There were Americans who felt the same way, but apparently none of them could make a solid case for what the U.S. should do if Khomeini called the bluff.

Wheeling and dealing sometimes works, but carries a moral and political cost. Until Ollie North's secret arms-for-hostages scheme blew up in political scandal, it did secure the release of three Americans: the Rev. Benjamin Weir, Father Lawrence Jenco and David Jacobsen. But most U.S. politicians and the majority of the population were not prepared to countenance such a cynical trade.

In the end, circumstances, more than people, made the difference. Hizballah began to run into trouble in 1989. Iran was in terrible straits after eight years of war with Iraq. The fiercely anti-American Khomeini died and his successor, President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, decided it was necessary to cool revolutionary rhetoric in order to woo desperately needed trade and investment from the West. The slow shift in Iran toward more pragmatic policies to end the country's pariah status was the biggest single reason the last U.S. hostages in Lebanon were finally released.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the cutoff of most of its aid carried a blunt message to Syria, another major backer of terrorists. There was no longer any likelihood of becoming a regional superpower with armaments supplied by Moscow. As Iran took a more moderate course, Syrian President Assad had to worry about becoming isolated if he continued to support the extremist factions.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait marked the beginning of the end of the hostage drama. First, 15 pro-Iranian terrorists were released from prison in Kuwait, eliminating one of the Hizballah factions' principal demands. Then Assad weighed the odds and joined Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the international coalition arrayed against his archenemy Saddam Hussein. When Iraq's army was destroyed, Arab extremism and rejectionism suffered a devastating blow. The U.S. emerged as the only superpower with influence in the region and was actively trying to restart the Middle East peace process.

Assad decided to try diplomacy, the only game in town. The U.S. responded to the shift and to Syria's cooperation against Iraq with modifications of its own. Washington signaled that instead of trying to force Syria out of Lebanon, where its "peacekeeping" forces had settled in, the U.S. might be able to live with Syria as the dominant power there.

The hostages were now a hindrance to both Iran and Syria in their hopes to improve relations with the West, so they decided to end the stalemate by pressing the Hizballah factions to release them. Once the main players had a real interest in seeking a solution, the pieces began into fall in place. Three Western hostages were released last August, and the kidnappers invited U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar to step in.

A successful negotiation has to give something to everyone. As it turned out, when the end of the hostage crisis came into sight, the U.S. leaned toward concessions that cost it little. It looked the other way when Syria tightened its grip on Lebanon. It continued to release blocked Iranian funds. Last week Washington handed over $278 million it owed Tehran for American-made ships and planes that Iran had paid for but never received after Khomeini took power. The U.S. also stopped objecting to other people -- U.N. and Israeli negotiators -- dealing with the kidnappers.

Bush still managed to stand aloof, while encouraging those who were doing the dealing. Washington officials argue that there is a clear distinction between its minor concessions and those that might encourage future hostage taking. The return of Israeli-controlled captives was Israel's idea, and giving Iran back its own money is not literally a payment. Relations with Iran and Syria have eased, but neither is yet in the friendly category. By giving nothing it would not have been willing to concede anyway, Washington has helped cook a deal that is not likely to whet the appetite of the terrorist groups.

Amid the futility, real winners are hard to find. But after eight years of the hostage drama, every participant will try to claim some gains:

The U.S. has its citizens back, stronger influence than ever in the Middle East, and can persuasively claim its stand-firm policy was successful. Even while the hostages were in terrorist hands, the U.S. continued to support Israel and led the coalition against Iraq.

The U.N., by proving that a legitimate, neutral negotiator can succeed even in highly publicized efforts, has gained new stature and importance in the world.

Iran is shedding its pariah status, strengthening ties with Western Europe and getting back hundreds of millions of dollars in badly needed frozen funds, despite masterminding the whole crisis. Lest anyone think Bush was ready to embrace Iran, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said last week, "They are still a terrorist state and there's still no change in that."

Syria is the master of Lebanon, which it has always coveted. It is still on the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting nations, but its relations with the West are improving. Washington has even hinted that it will be more supportive of Syria's demand that Israel return the Golan Heights.

Israel is worried that it has not completed the deal yet, but is willing to trade almost 300 Lebanese prisoners, along with kidnapped Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a Hizballah cleric, for one possible Israeli survivor, air force Captain Ron Arad, and the remains of five other servicemen.

The kidnappers accomplished none of their major goals. But Tehran claims they have been reassured that they will not be captured and killed now that they have turned loose their hostages. Though their sponsors in Iran and Syria have pulled back, the kidnappers still claim to have found redemption and inspiration in their years of brutalizing their captives. In a videotaped statement read by Terry Anderson the day of his release, Islamic Jihad asserted, "We made the world listen to our voice and the voice of the oppressed and suffering people, took off the mask from the ugly American face and criminal Israeli face, deepened the state of enmity and hate in the spirits of oppressed peoples toward both of them."

As Anderson observed, even those who deeply disagree with that statement "should try to understand it." The international realignments that ended the hostage crisis represent a major setback to the political force of Islamic fundamentalism. "Middle East terrorism has been a failure," says Barry Rubin, a terrorism expert at Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, "from the point of view of carrying out a revolution, of changing U.S. policy, or of driving the U.S. out of the region." Terrorism, for now, has been sidelined in Lebanon, Iran and Syria.

But its causes -- the deep feelings of injustice and anger at Israel and the U.S. -- have not been eliminated. If the on-again, off-again peace talks do not move the participants toward a reasonable agreement, extremists will shout that diplomacy does not work, that violence and blood are the only language the other side understands. Already Islamic Jihad charges that the U.S. is using the peace conference "to complete imprisoning the whole region and chaining its people." The threat could hardly be plainer: if there is no peace, American citizens can expect to be made victims once more.

With reporting by William Dowell/Cairo and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington