The Storm over the Shah

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For four weeks, the U.S. has experienced an outpouring of patriotism it has not seen in years. Americans deluged the White House with endorsements of Carter's policy toward Iran. Across the country, people rang church bells and wore white armbands to show sympathy for the hostages.

This sense of patriotism reached even college campuses that not long ago seethed with unrest against some U.S. foreign policies.

All week, the efforts toward achieving a diplomatic solution focused on the U.N. At the private urging of the U.S., Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim asked the Security Council to meet as soon as possible for its first formal debate on the situation in Tehran. The Council met on Tuesday and then adjourned until Saturday, so that Iranian representatives could fly to New York to present their country's position. But then Khomeini balked. He condemned the session as having been "dictated in advance by the U.S.," and Iran's Revolutionary Council voted to boycott the debate. The U.N. went ahead anyway, and in an extraordinary Saturday night session, speaker after speaker—including those from the Soviet Union and a number of African nations—denounced Iran for holding the Americans. When the debate ends this week, the Council is expected to approve a resolution calling formally for the release of the hostages. Some Council members also wanted the resolution to refer to the Iranian complaints against the U.S.

Khomeini, refusing all talk of compromise, made repeated broadcasts from the holy city of Qum, whipping his followers into a mass frenzy that culminated in two vast outpourings of support. The first was on Friday, which to Iran's Shi'ite Muslims was Ashura, the holiest day of the year (and the anniversary of the demonstrations that led to the Shah's downfall). The second was on Sunday, when Iranians were to vote on a new constitution that would make Khomeini in effect dictator of the country. With the Imam flatly declaring that it was every Iranian's religious duty to vote for the charter, the outcome of the referendum was a foregone conclusion.

Even before that vote, however, Khomeini made it clear once again who was in charge. The victim this time was Foreign Minister Abol Hassan Banisadr, the bushy-mustached economist who had been in office just 18 days, and who had seemed to be relatively moderate, or at least flexible. He had tried to attend the U.N. debate. Said he: "We want to demonstrate how the U.S. ruled our nation during the Shah's regime." Despite such rhetoric, U.S. officials hoped that private talks in New York might make some progress. Banisadr also opposed any trial of the U.S. hostages. He told a delegation of Western ambassadors that he would "do what I can to prevent it." (His chief accomplishment as minister, in fact, had been the release of 13 blacks and women from the captured embassy.) Last week he joined his colleagues on the Revolutionary Council in Qum for their regular weekly meeting with Khomeini. Soon afterward, Banisadr lost his job.