Marin Independent Journal

Lessons from the hostage crisis
By Beth Ashley
IJ senior feature writer

Sunday, November 07, 2004 - IT'S BEEN 25 YEARS since a group of Iranian students invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran, capturing 50 Americans and holding them hostage for 444 days.

Author David Harris of Mill Valley, 58, says not much has changed in U.S.-Iranian relations since that time.

The Iranian government still sees America as the devil incarnate, and America still puts Iran on the Axis of Evil. The two sides continue to view each other across a broad chasm of ignorance and misunderstanding.

But Harris believes much can be learned from those far-off events, America's first brush with militant Islam.

In his new book, "The Crisis," he traces the passions that led to the hostage-taking and describes, month by month, America's tortured attempts to set the hostages free.

"The hostage crisis was the template for everything that is happening today," he says. After Sept. 11, "that undigested experience from 25 years ago suddenly jumped back into everybody's living room."

When he began research for his book, Harris spent more than a year reading government documents and cables of the time, presidential papers from the Carter Library, contemporary press accounts, and memoirs by key figures on the American side - Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, chief of staff Hamilton Jordan.

He had begun the book pre-Sept. 11, in the spring of 2001, intent on reliving the experience that had riveted Americans to their television screens for more than a year and helped doom Jimmy Carter's presidency.

"But once 9/11 happened," he says, "I knew I needed to expand the Iranian viewpoint."

He went to Iran in 2002 and spent several weeks there - visiting the now-deserted embassy - interviewing Iranian officials and talking to participants in the takeover, including the students themselves.

His book, he resolved, would be an opportunity for American readers "to see ourselves face-to-face with Islam."

It took awhile, but Harris eventually secured a journalist's visa from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture in Tehran, which also assigned a "media guide" to accompany him at all times. The friend he brought with him as an assistant was turned back at the Tehran airport, perhaps in retaliation after American authorities had held an Iranian filmmaker in a restroom in the New York airport for four hours. Or maybe, Harris speculates, because his friend had a Jewish-sounding e-mail address.

Harris, a bit apprehensive at first, was on his own. To his surprise, he had no problems, and his media guide helped contact those he wanted to see.

"People universally greeted me with great hospitality," he says. "They have a great hunger for connection to things American. The great majority of the Iranian people want to be part of the world, privy to our art, music, fashion. I experienced no hostility."

Piecing his story together was a challenge.

"It is not clear to me what anyone could have done (to bring the two sides together)," he says. Iran was in the middle of a revolution - it had been a matter of months since the Shah's departure and the takeover by Ayatollah Khomeini - and it was also a time when America, recently extricated from the Vietnam War, was feeling the limits of its power.

Those close to Carter had opposing views about what course to follow: Vance counseled patience, Brzezinski plumped for military action. Eventually, Brzezinski's side won, propelling the disastrous rescue attempt that cost the lives of eight American airmen and the loss of several planes.

"If there was any hero in the story, it was Carter," says Harris, "because he brought every hostage home alive without starting a world war. For that we should all be grateful."

Carter's mistakes were committed before the hostage-taking, Harris believes, when he prolonged American support for the Shah, even lavishly praising him on the eve of his overthrow - actions that inflamed an Iranian public that was focussed on throwing him out.

At one point, Carter admitted the deposed Shah to the United States for medical treatment, "knowing in his heart what would probably happen."

Once the hostages were taken, our side was "severely limited by our ignorance (of Iranian politics)," says Harris. "And because we had refused to talk to the people we needed to talk to."

Thereafter, the hostage story became a central issue in American life, Harris says. "Polls showed that 90 percent of Americans were not only aware but were pissed off." American anger made it almost impossible for Carter to negotiate with the Iranians, who in turn were so angry at America that they closed off all communication.

"I was surprised at the depth of feeling on the Iranian side," Harris says. "(The hostage-taking) was not just a stray act by a stray bunch of students. It was an upsurge from decades worth of history."

At the same time, the students did not expect their act of rebellion to last more than 72 hours. "They had no idea that they had stumbled on an act that touched a raw nerve among the great majority of Iranian people."

Although Iranian statesmen like Abolhassan Bani Sadr and Sadeg Ghotbzadeh recognized that the embassy takeover was a serious breach of diplomatic protocol, no one in Khomeini's camp wanted to back down.

The deadlock continued for 444 days, and ended only when both the Iranians and the Americans had new governments in place. The hostages came home on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.

Today, the crisis has receded in American memory, Harris says. "For us, it's history, but the Iranians haven't distanced themselves from it yet. Our relationship is frozen in amber."

The United States has not had an embassy in Tehran since 1979; Iran has no embassy in Washington, D.C.

"Now we're talking regime change again," says Harris, "letting hostility build up for no real good reason."

His advice: "Talk. We're practically at war with each other and we haven't even talked."

He blames intransigence on both sides. "In the crisis, Iran showed itself to be just as ignorant and chauvinistic as we were."

Harris, known for his high-profile opposition to the Vietnam War, is the author of eight previous books, including "Dreams Die Hard," "The Last Stand" and "Shooting The Moon."

Of all his books, he says, "'The Crisis' is easily the best."

It is "a strong effort on a subject that couldn't be more central. It is essential reading for all Americans."

bashley@marinij.com.

Beth Ashley can be reached at

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