Word: banisadr
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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...
...Abol Hassan Banisadr, 47, is Iran's new acting Foreign Minister and Finance Minister. His quiet manner, spectacles and Charlie Chaplin mustache belie a deep-rooted fierce economic radicalism. An economist who studied at the Sorbonne, Banisadr says Iranian foreign policy has "a single objective: freedom from economic, cultural and political dependence on the West." He adds: "There are two things you can do-fight or rot. I prefer to fight...
...Iran's new revolutionary government. After the U.S. embassy in Tehran was seized, the regime welcomed back many of the same correspondents-with a particular goal in mind. Last Thursday the Iranian Ministry of National Guidance invited 200 foreign journalists over for lunch. Acting Foreign Minister Abol Hassan Banisadr made a sugary appeal for more sympathetic coverage of his government's attempts to retrieve the Shah, declaring, "Diplomats cannot solve this problem...
...into the nervous realm of high finance. While Iranian officials openly delighted in the chaos they were creating, the acting Finance and Foreign Minister threatened to renege on his government's debts to foreign banks and other creditors the world over. Renouncing previous pledges of payment, Abol Hassan Banisadr declared: "We will not pay back these debts. How can we repay loans that former plunderers received from their foreign accomplices and put back into the accomplices' banks?" He put the debts at "$15 billion, possibly more...
...Thursday, when Banisadr first said the Iranians might release some hostages, the student leaders actually occupying the embassy property quickly asserted that they took orders only from the Ayatullah Khomeini, and that nobody was going to be released until the U.S. had sent the Shah back to Iran. Admitted one White House official: "We don't know with any certainty who these students are or who's in charge. That doubles the trouble...