Iran Hostages: Honorable Deal - or Ransom?

The debate begins over the agreement with Iran

The bells had scarcely finished pealing out the nation's joy over the hostages' release before the debate broke out on a tormenting question: Was the agreement that freed the captives a victory for peaceful, persistent diplomacy, or a humiliating payment of ransom that may encourage further terrorism against diplomats—or a little bit of both? Though the argument was somewhat muted last week by the euphoria surrounding the return of the hostages, it will intensify as outrage over the Iranian militants' harsh treatment of their captives spreads among Americans.

Supporters of the agreement contend, in the words of George Ball, former Under Secretary of State, that "all we did was give them back what they have always owned" —money on deposit in U.S. banks or then" foreign branches. Not all, or even most, of the money, either. Jimmy Carter claimed that of the nearly $12 billion in Iranian assets that he froze shortly after the hostages were seized, only $2.8 billion has been returned to the Tehran government free and clear. Most of the rest either was immediately returned to American banks to repay loans to Iran or will be tied up in escrow accounts until claims against Iran by U.S. companies and individuals are finally settled by an international arbitration commission.

Moreover, says Richard Bulliet, acting director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University: "If you compare the guidelines for a settlement that the U.S. offered very early on with the conditions that the Iranians presented, you find very little change on the U.S. part, and continual retrenchment on the part of Iran." The Iranians, for example, dropped their early insistence that the U.S. apologize for "crimes" against Iran and backed off from a demand that the U.S. deposit $24 billion in escrow in Algiers, an amount that Iranian officials reckoned equaled the total of the country's frozen assets and the late Shah's wealth. According to Richard Falk, a foreign policy expert at Princeton University: "I think that the settlement is being played too much as a deal. It was more a way to restore aspects of the status quo before the hostages were taken."

Carter's allies thus find the agreement not only consistent with national honor but something of a victory for patient diplomacy. That is also the view of some friendly foreign governments. British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington called the arrangement "a right move." West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who scorned Carter's approach to many other foreign policy issues, called the hostage release "a personal triumph for former President Carter and a triumph for the forbearance, patience, discipline and fortitude of the American people." Said Rudolf Wildenmann, a political scientist at the University of Mannheim: "There was no other decent solution. The U.S. has not lost face."