When Iranians made 'Great Satan' blink

As the Americans go to the polls on Tuesday, crowds of Khomeinist militants will gather in front of the former US Embassy in Tehran to recall the day they threw the gauntlet at "The Great Satan" almost 30 years ago.

With chants of "Death to America", the militants will recall the day they raided the embassy to seize and hold its diplomats hostage for 444 days.

The embassy seizure showed that Americans were no longer safe outside their homeland and that even diplomatic immunity would not protect them. A quarter of a century later, came the 9/11 attacks that showed Americans were no longer safe even in their homeland.

In a sense the November 4, 1979 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran could be regarded as the opening scene of a drama that reached its catharsis on September 11, 2001.

'Green Belt' strategy

The 1979 embassy attack came at a time when President Jimmy Carter was trying to prop up the new Khomeinist regime in Tehran.

Carter had decided to support Khomeini in the context of the so-called "Green Belt" strategy developed by his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski. That strategy was born out of the assumption that the US and its allies were unable to contain the Soviet Union that was extending its influence into Africa, the Indian Ocean and, through left-leaning regimes, in Latin America.

The strategy had been partly inspired by French Sovietologist Helene Carrere d'Encausse who, in her book The Fragmented Empire, predicted the disintegration of the USSR as a result of Muslim minorities' revolt.

When the Islamic revolution started in Iran, the Carter administration saw it as the confirmation of its assumption that only Islamists could master enough support to provide an alternative to despotic regimes and pro-Soviet leftist movements.

Deciding to hedge his bets, the ayatollah played a double game for several days after the embassy raid, waiting to gauge American reaction.

According to his late son Ahmad, who had been asked to coordinate with the embassy-raiders, the ayatollah feared "thunder and lightning" from Washington. Instead, came bland statements by Carter and his aides begging for the release of the hostages on humanitarian grounds.

Ahmad Khomeini's memoirs echo the surprise that the ayatollah showed as the Carter administration behaved "like a headless chicken".

Anti-imperialist stance

Once he had concluded that the US would not take action against his regime, Khomeini took control of the hostages' enterprise and used it as a means of highlighting his "anti-imperialist" credentials, outflanking the left.

Matters became worse when a military mission sent by Carter to rescue the hostages ended in tragedy in the Iranian desert.

In his memoirs, Ahmad Khomeini catches the mood of his father who had expected the Americans to do "something serious" such as threatening to block Iran's oil exports or firing a few missiles at the ayatollah's neighbourhood.

It was then that Khomeini coined his slogan "America Cannot Do a Damn Thing."

He also ordered that the slogan "Death to America" be inscribed in all official buildings and vehicles.

The slogan "America cannot do a damn thing" became the basis of strategies worked out by Islamist militant groups, including those that, for doctrinal or political reasons, were opposed to Khomeini.

Between November 4, 1979 and September 11, 2001 a total of 671 Americans were seized and held hostage for varying lengths of time in several Muslim countries.

Almost a thousand Americans were killed, including 241 Marines who were blown up while asleep in Beirut in 1983.

For 22 years the United States, under presidents from both parties, behaved exactly in the way Khomeini predicted. It took countless successive blows, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, without decisive retaliation.

That attitude invited, indeed encouraged, more attacks.

Thus, 9/11 was the natural continuation of the November 4 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran.

Iranian author Amir Taheri is based in Europe and is a member of Benador Associates.