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A major difficulty for the Administration was that throughout the week various Iranian authorities kept changing the terms of the bargaining. On Tuesday Acting Foreign Minister Abol Hassan Banisadr sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. The letter implied that the hostages could be released if the U.S. agreed to turn over the Shah's personal fortune to Iran and "at least accept the investigation of the guilt of the former Shah and its consequences." The letter omitted any specific demand for the Shah's return. Some officials saw the beginnings of a compromise here, but Banisadr said later the new terms really meant "the return of the Shah."
On Thursday, when Banisadr first said the Iranians might release some hostages, the student leaders actually occupying the embassy property quickly asserted that they took orders only from the Ayatullah Khomeini, and that nobody was going to be released until the U.S. had sent the Shah back to Iran. Admitted one White House official: "We don't know with any certainty who these students are or who's in charge. That doubles the trouble."
At the State Department, Iran specialists were similarly uncertain about the degree of leftist and even Communist influence in the highly disorganized Khomeini regime. Was Khomeini really in charge or just presiding over an internal power struggle? Did the fall of the government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan two weeks ago portend a new campaign by Iranian leftists to seize power for themselves? One puzzling element in the recent unrest was the sudden fall from favor of Ibrahim Yazdi, who had been one of Khomeini's closest courtiers during the Ayatullah's last days in exile in France. Partly because he had spent 16 years in the U.S. and had become a naturalized American citizen (a fact that he denied steadfastly during his seven months as Foreign Minister), the U.S. had hoped that Yazdi would prove useful in rebuilding Washington's ties with Tehran. Yazdi had secured the release of American diplomats during the earlier, and much briefer (two hours), embassy siege last Feb. 14. In September Yazdi and Vance had talked at the U.N. for four hours about military supplies for Iran and the future of U.S.-Iranian relations. Vance came away from that meeting thinking that the Bazargan government was slowly acquiring more authority over the rabble-rousing mullahs who surround Khomeini. It was a mistaken conclusion.
The sudden fall of Bazargan and Yazdi evoked fears that both the more radical ayatullahs and the leftist secular forces were using the embassy assault as a pretext for pushing the country sharply to the left. The small but well-organized Tudeh (Communist) Party has been held in check by Khomeini, who denounces the Communists fervently, if redundantly, as "godless atheists." The prevailing view in Washington is that the extreme leftists will continue to ride the Khomeini whirlwind as they gain key positions in the ruling 15-man Revolutionary Council, and will eventually try to brush Khomeini aside in a final grab for power.
At this point, the principal bond that unites the different factions