378 • 19 THE REASSERTION OF ISLAMIC POWERback to Iran for trial and apologize for its role in his crimes and human
rights abuses against the Iranian people. The US government and people
were outraged at this gross violation of international law. Popular slogans
such as "nuke Iran" articulated this anger. Most Americans urged Carter to
punish Iran, but what could the US have done without endangering the
hostages? Attacking Iran would have enraged the whole Muslim world.
Washington stopped buying oil from Iran, froze more than $11 billion in
Iranian assets deposited in US banks, required 50,000 Iranians holding US
student visas to register, and took various measures in other countries
(and in NATO, the UN, and the World Court) to press Iran's government
to make the militants set the hostages free from their captivity in the em¬
bassy. Nothing worked.
The US government's restraint could not stop angry mobs from storm¬
ing its embassies in Pakistan and Libya. Sunni militants captured the main
mosque in Mecca and held it for two weeks before the Saudi army and na¬
tional guard took it back in a bloody affray. Shi'i militants demonstrated
in eastern Saudi Arabia. In effect, the ayatollah and the militant students
holding the embassy came to symbolize Third World peoples' new as-
sertiveness against Western power; in the eyes of the American public,
they stood for their government's weakness against "militant Islam." Why
were perceptions so different? Part of the answer is that Americans gener¬
ally know little about their government's foreign policy and how it affects
other people. Nonetheless, Iran and the US, however hostile to each other
in November 1979, would still need each other in the long run. The USSR
reminded them the following month by sending 100,000 troops into
neighboring Afghanistan.
The hostage crisis, during its 444-day duration, sparked major changes:
Premier Bazargan's replacement by an avowed Khomeini supporter, the
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the movement of US forces into the In¬
dian Ocean, the military takeover in Turkey to end fighting between its
Muslim and Marxist factions, Iraq's invasion of Iran in September 1980,
and Reagan's decisive victory over Carter in the 1980 election. Iran could
no longer sell oil to Western customers, causing domestic hardships such
as unemployment and price inflation. The hostage crisis also strengthened
the militant ulama against their rivals: secular nationalists, moderate re¬
formers, Marxists, and separatists. When a secular nationalist won Iran's
presidential election, causing Americans to hope that he would release the
hostages, the ayatollah made sure that he was stymied by Muslim militants
in the cabinet and in the new Majlis.
No Western-educated politician, no matter how strongly he had opposed
the shah, could hold power in this new regime; but the army regained some