Word: ayatullah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Once the embassy was captured, the worst period of the hostages' ordeal began. Fresh details of the early days of captivity were disclosed last week by some of the eight black men and five women who were released after 16 days by the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini as a propaganda move, and by Richard I. Queen, 29, the embassy's vice consul, who was let go last July because he was suffering from multiple sclerosis...
...State Department analysts now believe that Iran's leadership began to change its attitude toward the American captives about last August. By then, the hard-line Iranian clergy had consolidated their position in the new government and the American economic sanctions were beginning to hurt. And although the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini had said that he was unwilling to negotiate with Carter or his "henchmen," the Iranians began to look for contacts with Washington...
Meanwhile, the Shah, recuperating in Panama (Mexico had refused to readmit him), was beyond U.S. jurisdiction. In Paris, a nephew of the Shah was assassinated on orders of Ayatullah Sadegh Khalkhali, the revolution's hanging judge. In Iran and in the U.S., people were digging in for a long haul...
...equipment, or our nerve? Had there been a reasonable chance of success or was Carter's raid an ill-advised act of desperation? Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed any military rescue attempt from the beginning, resigned. Carter replaced him with Senator Edmund Muskie. In Iran, Ayatullah Khalkhali crowed over Carter's defeat, as authorities with knives picked at the bodies of the dead American raiders before television cameras. Iran and the U.S. haggled over the return of the bodies, parodying in a grisly way the endless dreary bickering, now six months stale, over the release...
...Khomeini follower who was Iran's new Prime Minister. The letter was the first direct communication between the governments since before the April raid. Khomeini replied, giving conditions for the hostages' release, and for the first time did not mention the necessity of an American apology. The Ayatullah demanded merely the return of the Shah's fortune, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, cancellation of U.S. claims against Iran, and a pledge of noninterference. But a day later, as the Majlis considered appointing a commission to study the hostage issue, the speaker of the assembly, Muslim Hard-Liner...