Blackmailing the U.S.

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Instead, as it has had to do in a number of other recent crises, the Administration decided on restraint. Initially, the White House asked Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan to intervene. But last Tuesday, after months of trying to steer his country on a rational course, Bazargan resigned in frustration and anger, thus bringing down his government. Carter then designated former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and onetime State Department Iranian Expert William Miller as his personal envoys, both of whom knew Khomeini; the Ayatullah refused to see them. After that, the U.S. consented to try the good offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and still later it called on the U.K. for help.

The crisis began last Sunday, at a time when relations between the U.S. and Iran were, in the words of former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, "lukewarm but improving." Only three days earlier, Prime Minister Bazargan had held a cordial 90-minute meeting with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in Algiers, where both men were attending the 25th anniversary celebration of the start of the Algerian war of independence from France. The Iranians had long since resumed U.S. oil shipments, which had been disrupted by strikes and fighting earlier in the year. The National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) is now selling about 700,000 bbl. a day to the U.S. (compared with 900,000 bbl. a day when the Shah ruled Iran), or about 3.7% of American petroleum needs. The U.S. had resumed the sale of spare military parts as requested by the Tehran government. Last week the Administration quietly halted those shipments.

These improving relations were possible, in part, because the Carter Administration months earlier had quietly persuaded the deposed Shah not to seek permanent sanctuary in the U.S. Though reluctant to do so, the Administration had concluded that the Shah's safety could not be guaranteed against the thousands of Iranian students in the U.S. Nor could Washington realistically hope that the Khomeini-dominated regime would not resort to a campaign of reprisals against the U.S., through either an oil embargo or assaults against Americans in Iran. But last month, after the Administration learned that the Shah was seriously ill, it granted him a temporary visa to visit New York City for medical treatment.

That decision was not taken lightly.

Most Iran specialists in the State Department, buttressed by warnings from the embassy in Tehran, were convinced that the Shah should not be allowed into the U.S. even for emergency medical care. They cited explicit threats from members of the Revolutionary Council as well as from the Iranian embassy in Washington. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Newsom, who is in charge of day-to-day U.S. policy toward Iran, agreed with that assessment. He sought to persuade Secretary of State Cyrus Vance that, regardless of political and humanitarian motives, the granting of even a temporary visa to the Shah would have devastating consequences for American interests in Iran. Vance disagreed, and advised the President to grant the Shah a temporary visa. Carter was glad to make the humanitarian gesture. The Tehran government was assured that the Shah was indeed a sick man, that his visit was not a ruse to seek permanent residency and had no political purpose. Iranian authorities warned that the Shah's medical