Nation: From the Campus to the Street

Iran's radicalized students practice the uses of power

Can those really be mere college students who are holding 50 Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran? The suspicion that they are instead seasoned militants is reinforced nightly when newscasts show armed men outside the embassy who look more like combat soldiers, an impression both accurate and misleading. The men in dark green fatigues are not students: they are members of the Pasdaran, the Islamic revolutionary guard. But there is general agreement among Iranians and Western diplomatic sources that the 200 or so young...