Nation: Mission Impossible

Waldheim goes to Tehran and returns empty-handed

A doctor of law, a career diplomat in the Austrian foreign service, staid, elegant Kurt Waldheim had never confronted such a scene. Several hundred maimed Iranians, all veterans of the rioting that toppled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi a year ago, shook their crutches and artificial limbs at the United Nations Secretary-General as they swarmed around him at a former military officers' club in Tehran. "Waldheim, look at us," shouted one of the wounded demonstrators. "Give the Shah back to us!" One man plucked out his glass eye...

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