The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

vided each side with the assumption of enmity: with those starting points, subsequent events have proved the argument. The Incomprehensible Iranian For the American side, the embassy seizure laid the foundations for the subsequent myth. The students’ action suggested that the Islamic Republic and its leaders had all the evil attributes noted above. Through most of the crisis, the Iranian side seemed impervious to reason, obsessed with real or imagined past grievances, and determined to follow Ayatollah Khomeini’s most extreme rhetoric even if it led them to destruction. Seen through that prism, many events following the crisis — the Khobar Towers attack, the Embassy Beirut bombings, the Lebanon hostage-takings, the arms-for-hostages deal, the attack on the Buenos Aires Jewish centers, and the recent, dubious Holocaust conference in Tehran — pro- vided further confirmation that our original opinions were correct. Their own actions proved that Iranians — or at least those in charge of the Islamic Republic — are as bad as we thought: devious, mendacious, fanatical, incomprehensible and worse. The reality of that event is both more complex and more tragic than the myth. The traumatic embassy seizure convinced the United States that it was facing a collection of screaming fanatics. But if the captivity was harsh and difficult for us and our families, for most Iranians the ramifications of the episode were many times worse. Iranian analysts, including some of the hostage-takers themselves, have maintained that the upheavals surrounding the hostage crisis led directly to the mass slaughters of the Iran-Iraq War, the victory of brutal extremists in Iranian domestic politics, the estab- lishment of a harsh and intolerant social system, the loss of an educated middle class and the ruin of an economy. The hostage-taking eliminated any hope that the Islamic Revolution might bring something better for the Iranian people. The Arrogant American The Islamic Republic has created its own myths about the United States and its actions in 1953. Starting from those events, it has convinced itself that the U.S. is deter- mined to dominate and exploit Iran, preferably by indirect means, but by force if necessary. Prime Minister Mossadegh was determined to re-exert Iranian pride and independence, symbolized by nationalizing the country’s oil resources. The U.S., which Iran had hoped would be a counterweight to the traditional colonial powers (Britain and Russia), could not tolerate such independence from a small, Third World country, turned against a nascent Iranian democracy, and betrayed the hopes that America would support Iranians’ struggle to be masters in their own house. From that unfortunate beginning, subsequent Ameri- can actions — lavish support for the shah, insisting on immunity for military advisers and their families in the 1964 Status of Forces Act, tacit and explicit support for Saddam in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, the sinking of Iranian naval vessels, the 1988 downing of an Iranian civil- ian airliner (Iranair Flight 655), the 2002 “axis of evil” rhetoric and the increased military presence on Iran’s periphery — have all confirmed the stereotype, first cre- ated in August 1953, of an America determined to bend Iran to its will and to crush Iranians’ aspiration for inde- pendence. Whether this unhappy relationship of accusation and counter-accusation is “mirror imaging” or a “downward spiral,” it is clearly one that feeds on accumulated griev- ances, reciprocal negative views, and stubborn refusals to admit that the view of the “other” — distorted as it might be — may have some basis in reality. Those in authority in Iran have never come to terms with the 1979 embassy seizure and their responsibility for that event. They pre- tend it never happened, rationalize it or, like former President Mohammad Khatami in 1998, say something like “Well, I am sorry that you feel bad about it.” (From individual Iranians, however, I have heard many apologies and expressions of regret, most recently during a Persian VOA-TV call-in show last November.) For their part, many American officials dismiss the events of 1953 as ancient history (if they know about them at all), excuse them as Cold War necessity and, when pressed, advise Iranians to “get over it.” Eternal Enemies? The cumulative effect of all this myth-making has been to build a huge wall of distrust between our two countries. Even when one side makes a tentative offer to explore a way out of the impasse, the other side reacts with suspicion and immediately asks itself, “Why are they making this offer? What are they really up to? Are they admitting weakness?” F O C U S 24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 7