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In the streets outside the embassy, crowds massed each day to howl for the heads of Carter and the Shah. Within the compound the militants settled in for a long occupation, hectoring foreign reporters at press conferences and making a point of hauling garbage wrapped in an American flag. It seemed that they had not decided what to do with the hostages. Simply hold them? Shoot them? Or, as they threatened more often as the days went by, try them as spies?
With an inspired cruelty, the militants refused to say how many hostages they held, leaving in doubt whether any Americans had died in the takeover or had been killed since (in fact, there were no deaths). No one outside the embassy was really sure how many staffers had been in the compound when the siege began, and how many had been elsewhere in the city. Chargé d'Affaires Bruce Laingen and two aides had been in the Foreign Ministry on business when the attack began, and they were held there, sinking gradually in status from diplomats to captives. Their number brought press estimates of the hostage population to "about 60"; as it was determined weeks later, the actual figure was 66. State Department vagueness about providing a check list of staffers on the payroll Nov. 4 became understandable two months later, when the Canadian government smuggled home six Americans who had managed to slip away from the U.S. embassy during the confusion of the attack and taken refuge in the Canadian embassy. That gallantry was a rare occasion of unalloyed joy for the frustrated and furious American nation during the hostage agony. Not the least of the pleasure was the outrage of one of the militants at the embassy, who complained, "It's illegal!"
Within a week of the embassy takeover, it was clear that the militants were acting with the approval of the stumbling revolutionary government, and President Carter began to retaliate. He stopped the delivery of $300 million in spare parts for the military arsenal bought from the U.S. by the Shah. Carter ordered the deportation of all Iranian students in the U.S. who were not complying with the terms of their visas, suspended imports of Iranian oil (4% of U.S. consumption), ordered the carrier Midway to steam from the Indian Ocean to the Arabian Sea, and froze $8 billion in Iranian assets deposited in U.S. banks.
The crisis was only two weeks old when Khomeini startled the world by ordering the release of eight black male hostages and five of the seven women held. (The two remaining: Elizabeth Ann Swift, the ranking Foreign Service officer in the embassy during the takeover, and Kathryn Koob, director of the Iran-American Society.) The explanation he gave, that blacks suffer in the U.S. and that Islam does not make war on women, suggested that the release was intended to soften world opinion, not mollify "America, the mother of corruption." A short time later Khomeini was dropping hints that the hostages would indeed be tried (and "executed by firing squad," Deputy Chief Islamic Prosecutor Hassan Ghaffarpour added). Khomeini went on to say that the U.S. President "knows that he is beating an empty drum. Carter does not have the guts to engage in a military operation."