Unexpected Help Provided by Iran in Hostage Crisis

Members of the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini played an unexpected and important role in helping to free the 39 American hostages in Beirut, Reagan Administration officials said Tuesday.

Iranian officials intervened twice to urge the extremist pro-Khomeini group Hezbollah (Party of God) to release the hostages it held, the U.S. officials said--in one instance breaking the last-minute logjam after Hezbollah had refused to accede to the deal Syria had brokered to free the captives.

The moves, from a radical Islamic regime that itself held Americans hostage five years ago, reflected pressure on Tehran from Syria’s President Hafez Assad, they said, as well as a cautious desire on Iran’s part to reopen relations with the West for tactical reasons.

Syria is a key Iranian ally and a supplier of arms for Iran’s war against neighboring Iraq, and Khomeini’s regime could not refuse a request from Assad to help solve the hostage crisis and bring Hezbollah under control, in the view of Administration analysts.

Iran has also taken a series of halting steps toward more normal dealings with the outside world, one State Department expert added.

“There has been an evolution in the thinking of the leadership,” he said. “They seem to want to break out of their isolation and appear less revolutionary, less zealous. That doesn’t mean they have changed their ideology; it only means they’ve changed their style.”

First Sign in Damascus

The first sign of Iranian help on the hostage crisis came a week ago Monday, when the powerful Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, denounced the hijacking during a visit to Damascus.

“Iran had no connection whatsoever with this incident, and had it known in advance of the hijacking and of the identity of the hijackers, it would have prevented it,” Rafsanjani told a press conference.

Administration officials initially discounted his rhetoric, but Syrian officials--who were becoming directly involved in the delicate negotiations for the hostages’ freedom--told them that Rafsanjani repeated the message to the leaders of Hezbollah.

Then, on Saturday, when Hezbollah at the last minute blocked the planned release of the Americans by refusing to deliver four hostages it held, Syrian President Assad asked the Iranians for help again. And the Tehran regime urged the militants to give in.

“The Iranians were particularly helpful in solving that hitch,” a senior State Department official said.

Syrian government officials said Monday that they were displeased at what they called a lack of U.S. gratitude for Syria’s role in the hostages’ release. State Department officials disclosed Tuesday that President Reagan spoke by telephone with Assad for about 15 minutes Monday to thank him for his efforts and ask him to use his influence to bring about the release of seven abducted Americans still held in Lebanon.

All Things Being Relative

On the subject of the Iranian role, the senior State Department official said it was noteworthy that Tehran’s cooperation was initiated by Rafsanjani, a relative pragmatist within Khomeini’s regime who appears to have won a political struggle with ultra-radicals who have promoted international terrorism as an arm of Tehran’s foreign policy.

Rafsanjani sent another tantalizing signal to the Administration last week during a visit to Peking, when he told reporters that Iran could eventually resume relations with the United States, which Khomeini has long condemned as the “Great Satan.”

“Although the United States has inflicted great damages on Iran, we do not say we want to have our relations with America cut off forever,” Rafsanjani said, according to Iran’s official government news agency. “But the United States should take the first step and assure our nation that it has abandoned its aggressions, and thus prepare the ground among our people.”

Khomeini Taunt

However, U.S. officials--noting that during the Beirut crisis, Khomeini derided Reagan for “begging for help, cap in hand”--said it was unrealistic to believe that Iran’s basic attitude had changed.

“They’re trying to present a more moderate face, but that doesn’t mean they have given up the idea of promoting Islamic revolutions,” the State Department analyst said. “They’ve been pushed into it by the war (with Iraq). They’re hurting a lot of ways--politically, economically, in terms of arms supplies. They need to decrease their isolation. . . . It may be as simple as wanting to get back onto the U.S. oil market.”

One clear effect of the Iranian moves, though, has been to irritate senior policy makers in the Reagan Administration, who have long viewed Iran as a center of terrorism, unremittingly hostile to the United States.

“It drove some people up the wall when they realized that the Iranians were trying to be helpful” in the hostage crisis, one official said. “They couldn’t stand the ambiguity.”