Angry Attacks on America

Khomeini's tirades spur outbreaks of mob hysteria—and bloodshed

The rancorous quarrel between the U.S. and Iran darkened and expanded last week into an ever more perilous confrontation.

From the U.S. came a warning of military force, from Iran an appeal to mob violence. Such violence broke out from Turkey to India, most seriously in Pakistan, where the first American blood was shed. And by this time Iran's fire-eating Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini had become so extreme, so demagogic, so streaked with irrationality that serious diplomats wondered how the breach could be repaired. "This is not a struggle between the United States and Iran," Khomeini declared. "It is a struggle between Islam and the infidels." He repeatedly threatened that the 49 American hostages held in the captured U.S. embassy in Tehran would be tried as spies, and possibly executed, if the U.S. does not send back the deposed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from the hospital in New York City.

The White House, supported by widespread American indignation against the Iranians, responded with a warning that "the consequences of harm to any single hostage will be extremely grave." President Carter backed up that warning by ordering the 80,000-ton carrier Kitty Hawk and five escorting warships to speed from Subic Bay in the Philippines to reinforce the carrier Midway arid twelve other ships already in the Persian Gulf area. Until last week, the White House had emphatically ruled out all talk of using military force against Iran; now it just as emphatically warned that while it was seeking a peaceful settlement it had "other remedies available."

"Why should we be afraid?" jeered Khomeini. "We consider martyrdom a great honor."

Khomeini's inflammatory rhetoric played a major part in the wave of Muslim fanaticism and anti-American violence that swept far beyond Iran. In Saudi Arabia, possessor of the world's greatest reserves of oil and American dollars, a band of extreme religious zealots seized the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the holiest shrine in all Islam (see WORLD). In Pakistan, a mob enraged by radio reports claiming that the U.S. had inspired the attack on the Mecca mosque stormed and set fire to the U.S. embassy. They left the modernistic, 30-acre compound a gutted ruin. Two Americans were killed; 90 others were rescued after seven hours of horror (see following pages). Angry crowds also threw rocks through the windows of a U.S. consulate in Izmir, Turkey; another crowd chanted "Down with American imperialism!" outside the American embassy in Dacca, Bangladesh; demonstrators in Calcutta stoned the U.S. consulate and burned President Carter in effigy.

Khomeini's reaction to the embassy attack in Pakistan was "great joy" and a call for all Muslims to join in an uprising against Western influence.