Word: banisadr
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According to British sources, tough sanctions at this moment could jeopardize fragile talks that are now under way between the West Europeans and top Iranian officials. British Ambassador Sir John Graham last week was asked by Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr to try to delay a Common Market decision on sanctions in order to give Iran's so-called moderates more time to work for the hostages' release. The trouble with this is that Tehran has repeatedly won postponements of threatened U.S. retaliatory measures by claiming that Iranian moderates needed more time, but after each postponement, the moderates could...
...another bad week for Iran's floundering President Abolhassan Banisadr. Not only did his candidates make a dismal showing in the second round of parliamentary elections; he also lost a battle in his power struggle with the clergy-dominated Islamic Republic Party. As the President and the mullahs jockeyed for control of Iran's wayward revolution, the faction-ridden and economically strapped regime of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini slipped ever closer to chaos...
...expected, the authorities in Tehran remained unmoved. Khomeini, who had previously blamed the London embassy seizure on the CIA, said nothing at all. Banisadr, who had been willing to accept "the martyrdom of our children in England," now declared merely that "the brave resistance of our children" had brought "its sweet fruit." Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh insisted, as before, that the London incident was a "terrorist act," while the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran was "a legitimate outcry against 25 years of oppression." Even more bluntly, one of the Revolutionary Council's leading zealots, Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed...
Speaking to a jubilant House of Commons, Mrs. Thatcher expressed the hope that "the way this operation was carried out will have an effect on the future position of American hostages in Iran." She noted pointedly, in reply to a message from Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr, that it was the responsibility of "each and every government to look after the safety of diplomats on their territory...
There was an even broader irony in the London embassy takeover. It dramatized the domestic unrest from which the Banisadr government has been trying to divert attention. For six months the authorities in Tehran have concentrated on the international crisis surrounding the American hostages. But that preoccupation has not succeeded in covering up all the serious threats facing the regime, from both the large and rebellious ethnic minorities and Iran's giant neighbor to the north, the Soviet Union...