Banisadr's Jolting Defeat

In a test of wills over the hostages, the militants win

There are, it now appears, two sets of hostages in Tehran. One consists of the 50 Americans who have been held prisoner at the U.S. embassy by Iranian student militants for 4 1/2 months. The other is the fledgling government of President Abolhassan Banisadr. Ending an intense battle of wills between the militants and the government over the fate of the hostages, the ailing spiritual leader of Iran's revolution, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, decreed last week that a five-member United Nations commission could see the American hostages only after it first published a report on the crimes of the deposed Shah.

Khomeini's decision was a humiliating defeat for Banisadr and his moderate colleagues; only a few days earlier Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh had all but maneuvered the militants into turning over their hostages to the ruling Revolutionary Council as a necessary first step in arranging for their release. The decision was also a slap in the face of the U.N. commissioners, who had overstayed their visit to Tehran in the hope of seeing the hostages. They returned to New York City last week, their mission officially "suspended." In Washington, frustrated officials of the Carter Administration were not only wondering what to do next, but worried about the physical and mental health of the hostages. NBC last week aired a film showing eleven of the captives, who appeared to be listless and depressed. Reports have reached the State Department that one hostage had apparently attempted suicide and another had been severely beaten after trying to escape.

What had gone wrong? The answer appeared to be that government officials had violated an informal understanding with the Ayatullah. In late February, Khomeini ruled that the new National Assembly, which is being elected this month and will convene some time in April, would have the final say on the hostages' future. Meanwhile, Banisadr and the Revolutionary Council would be in charge. Khomeini, who is recovering from a heart attack he suffered two months ago, would remain silent; the government, however, had his backing so long as it did everything on its own authority and did not involve him directly in any negotiations.

All went well until Foreign Minister Ghotbzadeh told the militants two weeks ago that he planned to honor their request to take charge of the hostages "with the approval of the Imam [Khomeini] and the Revolutionary Council." The militants immediately called him a liar. Next day the Revolutionary Council compounded the error by announcing that the

Ayatullah had agreed to let the U.N. commission see all the embassy prisoners. Khomeini, apparently feeling that his name had been invoked unnecessarily, finally broke his silence and sided with the militants. The commission, he said, could only "interrogate'' those hostages who had been accused of complicity in the Shah's crimes.

The commissioners, who had repeatedly been promised a meeting with the hostages, privately protested this "breach of faith." Publicly, they said only that they were not in a position to prepare their report on the spot and were returning immediately to New York. Ghotbzadeh tried hard to talk them into another postponement, but the commissioners were adamant. On the way to the airport, they were actually chased by four bearded militants in a ramshackle Datsun who were trying to deliver a bundle of embassy documents which, they said, contained "evidence of U.S. interference in Iran." Some of the documents had been assembled, strip by strip, from a pile of mangled paper that embassy staffers had fed into a shredding machine as the students stormed the compound last Nov. 4.

So wild was the chase to the airport that the commissioners wondered for a while whether they themselves would be the next kidnap victims. On the runway, the militants caught up with Algerian Co-Chairman Mohammed Bedjaoui, who refused to accept the documents. In a fury, an Iranian official lashed out at two of the militants, shouting: "You should be ashamed of yourselves! You think you have accomplished a feat by sabotaging President Banisadr's efforts. Believe me, you will regret your actions one day."

Banisadr reacted to the setback with a series of attacks on the students for their revolutionary theatrics. Day after day last week he charged that the continued occupation of the embassy strengthened the hand of the Soviet Union in neighboring Afghanistan. It also prevented Iran from building up its own economy, he said, and therefore its ability to resist outside pressure. Banisadr told merchants in the Tehran bazaar that while inflation, unemployment, scarcity of basic commodities and instability threatened the nation, the country's resources were being wasted on "useless games." In an interview with the Paris daily Le Monde, he charged that the militants were being exploited by "certain pro-Soviet political groups like the Communist Tudeh Party, which have an interest in isolating Iran . . . in order to prevent it from resisting the Soviet push into Afghanistan."

In an editorial for a paper that Banisadr publishes, The Islamic Revolution, he warned: "In our campaign against the U.S., the hostages are our weakness, not our strength . . . Our behavior today is, more than even before, a reflection of our weakness. We resemble a drowning man who grasps at a straw." Real independence from the U.S., he continued, requires "far more than holding a few hostages and wrangling among ourselves about who should have custody over them. This game is ridiculous when our economy, our administrative machinery and our armed forces are still dependent on the West, led by the U.S."

The main reason Banisadr wants the hostage crisis resolved is to concentrate his country's attention on Iran's economy, which is in desperate shape. Oil production, according to Western experts, is well below the government's official estimate of 2.7 million bbl. per day; construction is at a standstill; productivity has dropped by 80% in some large plants; tourism has vanished. Wages have been breed up by as much as 200% as the result of government decrees and worker militancy. The newly nationalized banking system is in confusion. Many Iranians fear their country could soon become little more than an exporter of oil and an importer of food, with the ruins of the economic structure the Shah built left to gather dust. Says a central bank official in Tehran: "If we do not start an economic recovery within six months, we shall be in a very dangerous situation--politically as well as economically."

In the current elections, whose final results will be known in early April, Banisadr's primary goal is to win a majority of seats in the new 270-member parliament against his principal clerical opposition, the Islamic Republic Party of the Ayatullah Mohammed Beheshti. If he succeeds, a settlement on the hostages may still be possible reasonably soon. Less extreme in his demands than the militants, Banisadr reached a tentative agreement with Washington under which the U.S. would confess to past offenses in Iran, promise not to interfere again, help Iran recover the funds removed by the Shah and refrain from opposing Iran's efforts to force his extradition from Panama.

The Carter Administration gave no serious thought to one obvious alternative to negotiation, a military rescue effort. In the view of U.S. officials, the prospects for such an operation have not changed since November--except possibly for the worse. The militants are still armed with automatic rifles and Uzi submachine guns, and in their four months of prison duty have received intensive weapons training. As one Carter aide put it: "The President is as frustrated as anyone, but he's not going to lose his temper and pull a Mayaguez." Banisadr's view on the military option was similar. He and Ghotbzadeh considered ordering a surprise seizure of the embassy two weeks ago, but ruled it out as being prohibitively risky.

Some Congressmen have urged the White House to impose stronger economic sanctions against Iran. Washington is reluctant to do so because few of America's allies would go along with an embargo, and such a move would push Banisadr closer to Moscow.* As he has made abundantly clear, Iran's new President is no friend of America's, but he remains the best hope for a stable, non-aligned government in a country that the U.S. can ill afford to let fall into the Soviet orbit.

* Washington has also taken a somewhat more relaxed view toward the movement of Iranian nationals than had been expected. It has allowed most Iranian diplomats to remain in the.U.S., and in the period between last Nov. 14 and March 9, it allowed 11,079 Iranian citizens to enter the U.S. Of these, 5,641 were tourists and 2,306 were students (During the same period, 12,697 Iranians left the U.S.) In his press conference last week, President Carter said that the visitors had been carefully screened and that permitting their immigration was a humane act.

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