Angry Attacks on America

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Initially, the occupiers seemed to have little understanding of the ramifications of their move, but now that they do, their egos are enormously inflated. They treat Mullah Mousavi Kho-eyni, Khomeini's envoy to them, with ill-concealed contempt. When asked by reporters if they would obey a Khomeini order to release the hostages, most merely shrug.

Radical leftists have sought, with some success, to put themselves at the head of the repeated anti-American marches. Says one Iranian journalist: "If Khomeini tried to back down now, we'd have a leftist takeover tomorrow." One of the demonstrators goes even further.

If Khomeini ordered the release of the hostages and the occupiers complied, he says, the leftist demonstrators outside "would jump over the wall, exterminate the hostages and probably the students as well."

Beneath Khomeini, the Iranian government is a babble of conflicting voices, some sounding bloodthirsty, others somewhat conciliatory. Acting Foreign Minister Abol Hassan Banisadr, who seems torn between two factions, managed to echo both themes at once last week. "If the U.S. Government intervenes militarily against Iran, all Iranians will fight to the last drop of blood," he proclaimed. But he also said: "The U.S., as a land of free people, can neither submit to the humiliation of surrendering a sick man [the Shah] to a regime such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, nor can it take any pleasure in the humiliation of saving the lives of about 50 to 60 of its citizens by turning over this sick man."

While the U.S. is determined not to hand over the Shah to the Khomeini regime, it would be happy to see him leave his Manhattan hospital to return to Mexico, or go to Egypt or Paris—almost anywhere. The Shah himself told ABC's Barbara Walters that though he was not "stupid" enough to go back to Iran, he hoped to leave the U.S. in two weeks.

His doctors imply that he could depart even sooner than that. They completed radiation treatments for the Shah's cancer of the lymphatic system last week, and though he still needs to have a gallstone removed from his bile duct, that does not have to be done in New York.

Says one doctor: "I think we could give the Shah a prescription for Darvon and send him back to Mexico."

TIME correspondents sampling U.S.

public opinion around the country last week found Americans almost unanimously against handing over the Shah to Khomeini. "We'd be groveling if we caved in now," says Boston Lawyer-Author George V. Higgins. But some consider that it was a major blunder to admit the Shah in the first place, even for medical treatment. Above all, there is frustration and anger. Willard Hedrick, owner of a construction company in St.