Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis Read Online Free Page B

Graves, the flamboyant United States Information Agency chief, had cabled Washington that week that the mood in Tehran had improved sufficiently to resume his program and increase his staffing. Laingen had even recommended allowing some family members of those working at the embassy to return to Tehran on a case by case basis.
    The decision to allow the shah to fly to New York City for cancer treatment had threatened to undo everything. In a meeting weeks earlier with Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi to inform him that the shah was being admitted to the United States, Yazdi had promised to do what he could to protect the embassy, but warned that it would be a tall order—he had doubted they would be able to do it. In an equivocating cable to Washington at the end of September, Laingen had predicted that the move would be a setback, but gave little hint that it might mean serious trouble for the mission itself. He had written of an overall improvement in American-Iran relations—itself a very rosy estimate—but admitted that progress was slow. “It is not yet of the substance that would weather very well the impact of the shah entering the United States.” He noted the ascendancy of the clerics, which “I fear worsens the public atmosphere as regards any gesture on our part toward the shah,” who was being denounced as a traitor and criminal whom justice demanded be returned to Iran to stand trial and, presumably, join the general parade of former regime officials to the killing grounds. “Given that kind of atmosphere and the kind of public posturing about the shah by those who control or influence public opinion here, I doubt that the shah being ill would have much ameliorating effect on the degree of reaction here.” In the next sentence he slightly backed off that assertion. “It would presumably make our own position more defensible if we were seen to admit him under demonstrably humanitarian conditions.” In other words: they won’t like it but, if it is well handled, the effect shouldn’t be catastrophic.
    It was one of several factors that weighed in favor of allowing the shah to come to New York for surgery. In October, Carter had polled his top advisers on the question, and most of them supported letting the shah in.
    “What are you guys going to advise me to do if they overrun our embassy and take our people hostage?” asked the president. No one had answered.
    The embassy had braced itself for the worst. Just three days earlier, fearing violent demonstrations, Laingen had ordered all nonessential personnel off the compound and had placed the entire complement of embassy marines on alert. But the protests, which turned out an estimated two million people at nearby Tehran University, had resulted in nothing more than some additional spray-painted graffiti on the compound walls. Friday and Saturday, the Iranian weekend, had been calm, and that Sunday morning there was a palpable sense of relief in the building, the sense that they had weathered the worst.
    In its heyday the embassy staff had numbered nearly a thousand; now it was down to just over sixty. Even in its stripped-down state it remained a complex enterprise with scores of objectives and tasks. Laingen and his small political and economics sections were busily trying to give Washington fresh insight into current conditions in the country. The defense attaché and newly organized military liaison staff were sifting through what remained of the two countries’ long-standing defense ties, and the small staff of information officers had begun the challenging task of convincing Iran that America was not the enemy. The consular section was coping with a flood tide of applications for visas from the substantial number of Iranians who needed no convincing—a line a quarter of a mile long had begun forming days before the new consulate opened that summer. There was the small CIA presence at the embassy, three officers who were trying to make sense of