He wrote: “The administration’s real vulnerability, I think, lies in its expectation—hardheaded in pursuit of oil, softheaded in its pursuit of Third World favor—that things were settling down in Iran, that the moderates were prevailing; that the extremists could be trimmed to size; that the United States could gain more from betting on the future (by providing its presence, arms, grain, heating fuel, schooling, etc.) than from cutting itself out of the game…. I sense a new rage, a disgust, building in this country against the president. He will pay.”
Even though the polls did not yet bear out Rosenfeld’s prediction, Carter knew that unless something happened they would. In a staff meeting at Camp David near the end of November, he reviewed all of the military options at his disposal and settled upon a broad strategy of ratcheting up pressure on Iran. First he would condemn, then threaten, then break relations, then mine three harbors, then bomb Abadan, and, if all this failed, put up a total blockade.
The president, at Brzezinski’s urging, also authorized a private message to be conveyed through an intermediary to Iran’s foreign minister, making a point of saying that the contents would not be made public so that there would be less danger of it being perceived as an empty threat: If one hostage was killed or seriously harmed, the United States would respond as though all the hostages had been, and the response would be swift and harsh.
On the last day of November, a Friday, Bruce Laingen watched as the day unfolded outside the tall third-floor windows of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s formal reception suite. Thanksgiving had come and gone and there was no change in the crisis. Initially, he, Tomseth, and Howland had stayed on at the Foreign Ministry out of solidarity with their colleagues, but their voluntary stay had evolved into something that, for all practical purposes, was imprisonment. Partly out of a sense of duty, partly out of loyalty to their captive colleagues, and partly out of respect for the other foreign missions in Tehran, the three were stuck, suspended in a bubble of increasingly awkward protocol.
It was a holiday in Iran, Ashura, a celebration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. The ministry building was empty except for the “security guards,” who over the previous three weeks had begun to seem less like protectors and more like jailers. On this day Laingen noted that they seemed more nervous, with huge street demonstrations planned throughout the city. If a mob decided to storm the ministry and seize the despised American “spies,” there was no way it could have been held off by such a small force.
Laingen watched as clumps of demonstrators moved in the streets below toward Tehran University for the Friday prayer meeting, center for the day’s celebrations. Many carried homemade placards and posters. The whole nation was in the grip of Islamist fervor, a kind of mass hysteria. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr had lasted only a few weeks as foreign minister, ousted apparently by mullahs who felt he was insufficiently pious to represent the nation overseas, and when Laingen heard a helicopter approach and land in the ministry’s garden, he recognized the figure stepping out as Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the replacement, back from an overnight visit to Qom, the real seat of power now in Iran.
Ghotbzadeh seemed an unlikely choice, a suave, dapper, clean-shaven man who did not wear religion on his sleeve. He was a thickset, swarthy man with small, deep-set eyes and a great broad nose, whose face seemed bottom heavy, with a wide mouth and the chin and jaw of a cartoon boxer. Ghotbzadeh was a smart, ambitious nationalist who had earned a degree of flexibility in an increasingly rigid Iran by dint of the friendship and alliance he had formed with Khomeini in Paris. Still, today was a day that demanded a show of reverence. He stepped right into a waiting Mercedes, no doubt hurrying to the Friday prayers, a great public show of faith held weekly on the grounds of Tehran University. It was now mandatory for all high officials.
The prayer meeting was on the radio. Laingen had been to them often enough—most recently with Henry Precht—so he could picture the whole scene, which he recorded in his diary, something reminiscent of old Nazi newsreels or the images in George Orwell’s 1984, only with an Islamic cast:
The high-pitched voice of the Friday ( Jomeh) preacher, the Ayatollah [Husayn-ali] Montazari, lecturing, cajoling, beseeching the crowds that by now jam every square foot of the university grounds and spread out in adjoining streets in all directions. The radio speaks of a million, possibly two, citizens of Tehran listening, remarkably attentive and orderly. The women are carefully segregated, the children surely restless, yet there is little evidence of this to our ears. The preacher, bearded and turbaned, stands with a bayonet and rifle in one hand, gesticulating with the other, without notes. His rostrum is a stage erected at one end of the main plaza of the university grounds. White cloth banners, emblazoned with black revolutionary and religious slogans, completely cover the outline of this elevated stand. The backdrop is a vast drawing on cloth of the face of Ayatollah Khomeini, gazing unsmiling and stern at the crowds below. At the very mention of the name Khomeini, the vast throng erupts in sound with thundering repeats of his name and then subsides into respectful attention.
After Montazari’s performance, a representative of the now celebrated Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line, heroic conquerors of the American fortress at the heart of the capital, urged the millions to march on the “den of spies.” Hateful rhetoric about the United States was developing a florid lexicon. Americans were “world-devouring ghouls,” who “skinned alive the meek ones” and “stripped nations of their resources.”
“Carter is vanquished!” came a shout from the crowd.
“Khomeini is victorious!” came another.
Symbols had replaced reality. It was as though taking hostage sixty-six unguarded Americans amounted to a great military victory.
Laingen wrote:
Through it all we are reminded of our colleagues inside the embassy compound…Daily they are beset by the rolling pressing sound of thousands of voices from the streets around them, calling for death to America, Carter, and imperialism. We are sick at heart, always fearful that mass hysteria of this kind could erupt into violence…We are saddened and depressed by this deliberate fostering of hate and venom and bitterness. We dread the thought of trying to sleep—sleep is almost impossible to achieve because of the pain and worry about where this tragedy will end.
To conclude the day’s festivities, Khomeini had called on everyone in Tehran to go to their rooftops and shout, “Allahuakbar!” for fifteen minutes. Outside the embassy walls the cries rose all over the teeming city, especially from the seemingly endless expanse of low gray and brown structures of the crowded slums to the south. Over and over and over again:
“Allahuakbar!”
“Allahuakbar!”
“Allahuakbar!”
5. Davy Crockett Didn’t Have to Fight His Way In
Immediately after wowing the brass at Fort Stewart in early November, and then staying up almost all night with Beckwith to celebrate, Major Logan Fitch had taken his newly certified Delta Force squadron for a week of skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado. He called it “winter warfare training” but the trip was primarily a reward, a chance to blow off steam. They all had been working for two years without a break. Fitch was an expert skier himself, and he hired some local instructors to assist him. They spent their days on the sunny slopes and their nights in the resort’s bars and restaurants. But before the week was up, Fitch was summoned back east. He was flown back alone to the CIA “Farm” in southern Virginia.