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Such crowing kept the Tehran street mobs in a state of agitation and brought the U.S. populace to a mood of rising rage. Carter expelled most of Iran's diplomats from the U.S. in December, and asked the U.N. Security Council to impose economic sanctions on Iran. At the same time, he began to erode Senator Edward Kennedy's supposedly unbeatable lead in the pre-primary-season polls. It was a bad time to be an Iranian student in the U.S. and a good time to be a seller of flags. The citizens of Hermitage, Pa., put up a new flag in the local cemetery for every day of the captivity. Yellow ribbons were tied around trees—old, oak and otherwise—across the country. The White House Christmas tree was left dark except for the star on its top. Bales of Christmas cards were delivered to the hostages, and a group of American clergymen was allowed into the embassy to conduct Christmas services for them.
Meanwhile, the Shah, recuperating in Panama (Mexico had refused to readmit him), was beyond U.S. jurisdiction. In Paris, a nephew of the Shah was assassinated on orders of Ayatullah Sadegh Khalkhali, the revolution's hanging judge. In Iran and in the U.S., people were digging in for a long haul.
In the first weeks of the new year Iran expelled U.S. journalists for unfriendly reporting, and Abolhassan Banisadr, the country's new President, called the hostage crisis "a minor affair, easily settled." Banisadr, who had been Foreign Minister until replaced by the truculent Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, publicly doubted the wisdom of the hostage taking. Now he seemed to be saying, though without much consistency, that the hostages would be released after a five-member U.N. fact-finding commission released its report on the Shah's crimes and the U.S. met Iran's conditions: admission of guilt, recognition of Iran's right to seize the Shah and his assets, and a pledge of noninterference. Ghotbzadeh, on the other hand, was saying that Iran could hold the hostages "more or less forever." The militants repeatedly undercut the diplomacy of both officials. They listened only to Khomeini, who, hospitalized with a weak heart, decreed that the hostage issue would be decided by the Islamic parliament to be elected two months later, in May. The U.N. commission heard and saw grisly evidence of torture by SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, but was not allowed to see the hostages. Sick or not, Khomeini was stage-managing his media event, and he wanted all attention directed at the Shah's crimes, not at the suffering of the hostages. A cautiously worded letter from Hostage William Keough gave his family in Waltham, Mass., a glimpse of the captives' isolation: "We are not privy to news and consequently are unaware of what efforts, if any, are being exerted on our behalf."