Angry Attacks on America

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Ayatullah Khomeini's speech, which included an incredible taunt. The President, said Khomeini, "knows that he is beating an empty drum. Carter does not have the guts to engage in a military operation."

When the President heard that, said one aide, "he clenched his teeth so tight that his jaw turned white." The reaction went far beyond personal pique: Carter and his aides took the speech as a sign that the Ayatullah had misread U.S. restraint as an indication that the nation was afraid to take any action. They agreed that he must be disabused of that notion. The President, who was spending Thanksgiving week at Camp David, returned immediately to the White House by helicopter for a late-afternoon meeting with the Special Coordination Committee, which has been meeting twice a day to plan strategy.

By the time the President strode across the White House lawn, head held defiantly high, the State Department had drafted a statement posing the military threat obliquely but unmistakably. Secretary Vance argued against issuing the statement immediately, on the ground that it might further inflame the mobs in Tehran. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and others insisted that the Iranians had to be warned of the dangerous consequences before they actually put any Americans on trial.

Carter approved the issuing of the statement, with one change: he personally rewrote the key sentence to remove any possibility that the U.S. would need authorization from the United Nations to use force. The six-sentence statement, as handed to reporters 45 minutes later, warned that the "other remedies" available to the U.S. are "explicitly recognized in the charter of the United Nations."

The reference was to Articles 42 and 51 of the charter. Article 42 empowers the Security Council to authorize "demonstrations, blockade and other operations by air, sea or land forces" of member nations to restore peace and security. Article 51 recognizes "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations" before the Security Council has time to respond. Under international law, an embassy is considered part of the territory of the nation maintaining that embassy; thus the Iranian seizure of the embassy in Tehran could be considered an armed attack on the U.S. itself.

Shortly after issuing the statement, Carter ordered the naval reinforcements to the Persian Gulf area from the Pacific. The ships should get there this week. The two flattops that will be on the scene carry at least 125 jet fighters and bombers.

The Pentagon has not yet decided just what the carriers should do; Washington's hope is that their mere presence near Iran will deter Khomeini and the street mobs from harming the hostages. If a greater show of force seems called for, one possibility is that the fleet would blockade the narrow Straits of Hormuz, through which tankers carry Iran's oil to foreign markets. A blockade would cut off Iran's international revenues, but it would also produce a serious world shortage of petroleum and a sharp increase in prices.

U.S. allies in Western Europe and Japan would be gravely injured.