Word: iranian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With that surprising announcement, broadcast over Iranian television and radio, the militants at the U.S. embassy in Tehran last week declared that they were now willing to turn their 50 American hostages over to the ruling Revolutionary Council and newly elected President Abolhassan Banisadr. That was still a long way from saying that the hostages would be released immediately, though it sounded like the best news the U.S. had heard from Tehran since the hostages were seized more than four months ago. But the Carter Administration reacted to the announcement with extreme caution-and, as it turned out, the caution...
...handling of the hostage crisis. Specifically, the critics had charged that Carter had given in to the militants by approving a special United Nations commission proposed by Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. The job of the five commissioners-lawyers from Algeria, France, Sri Lanka, Syria and Venezuela-was to investigate Iranian grievances against the deposed Shah and his U.S. supporters, and also to check on the health and safety of the American hostages...
...contradictory stop-and-go signals that have characterized the crisis and were waiting for a sure sign of progress. They were also fairly certain that Banisadr, who is believed to be anxious to get the matter settled once and for all, would be unlikely to free the hostages until Iranian public opinion had been prepared for so dramatic a move...
...students repeated their view that the commission's proposed visit to the embassy was a condition "imposed by the criminal government of the U.S.," and that Iranian government leaders did not really want the visit to take place. Nonetheless, they said, the Iranian government had been exerting "intolerable pressure" on them. "The government leaders harp on the theme that we are weakening them and that we are a state within a state." So, said the students, they were washing their hands of the whole affair. "Our responsibility for the hostages is over. We will turn over the spies...
...embassy compound, the militants seemed bitter and uncommunicative, especially as to why they had suddenly reversed themselves. Presumably they were waiting for Khomeini to endorse their actions, as he had done in the past. On Friday they demanded the right to address the Iranian people on radio and television, a privilege they enjoyed in the early days of the embassy siege. They also declared that, whatever happens to the hostages, the embassy compound had become their "home," and they would not leave it-nor would they surrender the embassy files...