It was an ugly, shocking image of innocence and impotence, of tyranny and terror, of madness and mob rule. Blindfolded and bound, employees of the U.S. embassy in Tehran were paraded last week before vengeful crowds while their youthful captors gloated and jeered. On a gray Sunday morning, students invoking the name of Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini invaded the embassy, overwhelmed its Marine Corps guards and took some 60 Americans as hostages. Their demand: surrender the deposed Shah of Iran, currently under treatment in Manhattan for cancer of the lymphatic system and other illnesses, as the price of the Americans' release. While flatly refusing to submit to such outrageous blackmail, the U.S. was all but powerless to free the victims. As the days passed, nerves became more frayed and the crisis deepened. So far as was known, the hostages had been humiliated but not harmed. Yet with demonstrators chanting "Death to America" outside the compound, there was no way to guarantee that the event would not have a violent ending.
In Washington, there were round-the-clock meetings of the National Security Council. At the State Department's operations center, Iranian specialists frantically tried to keep in touch with Tehran and with the few American officials there who were not in the students' hands. In New York City, the United Nations Security Council convened in special closed session to search for a solution. Said Jimmy Carter to reporters on Thursday: "These last two days have been the worst I've had." Secretary of State Cyrus Vance counseled the nation grimly and correctly: "It is a time not for rhetoric, but for quiet, careful and firm diplomacy."
Meanwhile, a wave of anger spread across the U.S. (see box). On campuses, Iranian flags were torched and the Ayatullah Khomeini was burned in effigy. In Beverly Hills, an anti-Shah demonstration by Iranian students turned into a near riot, with onlookers shouting obscenities at the Iranians. In New York City, at the close of an Iranian student demonstration, a Columbia University undergraduate shouted: "We're gonna ship you back, and you aren't gonna like it! No more booze. No more Big Macs. No more rock music. No more television. No more sex. You're gonna get on that plane at Kennedy, and when you get off in Tehran, you're gonna be back in the 13th century. How you gonna like that?" The Iranians, who stared back glumly, did not respond.
At week's end the impasse remained unresolved. The American hostages, under guard in the embassy, were visited by Swedish, Syrian and other diplomats. Some were allowed to send letters, and 33 reputedly signed a petition supporting their captors' demand that the U.S. extradite the Shah. Khomeini let it be known that he would not be receiving visitors over the weekend, thereby precluding for the moment much chance of direct negotiations for the prisoners' release.
The seizure of the embassy and its staff was an ugly permutation of the acts of political terrorism to which the world has grown increasingly accustomed. Most Iranians detest the Shah for the excesses of his regime, and what they feel was his plundering of their country. Many objected to the Carter Administration's decision to admit him to