One Man’s Strategy for His Brother’s Freedom : Don’t Provoke, Don’t Forget, Keep Talking

Dealing with hostage-takers is a dangerous and frustrating business. Police talking to a bank robber with his gun at someone’s head, or control-tower negotiators parleying with an airline hijacker, know the rules: Keep calm. Stay firm, but keep the dialogue flowing. Wait on your opponent. Never provoke him.

The time span of a Beirut kidnaping is infinitely longer than an airport stakeout, and it’s harder to deal with kidnapers who aren’t cornered. But the same rules apply. And politicians ignore them at their peril. There’s no quick way of hitting back at the Lebanese Hezbollah.

The greatest mistake is to react impetuously. Politicians love a quick fix. But the Israeli government’s Old Testament solution to its problems--”a kidnap for a kidnap”--was like President Jimmy Carter’s attempt to rescue the hostages in Tehran, doomed to failure from the outset. This enemy plays by different rules. Hostages are bound to be the first casualties.

A more insidious error is to remove the issue from the political agenda. When politicians can’t solve a problem quickly, they usually ignore it. This is a dangerous betrayal of democracy.

Political hostage-takers are not individual gangsters. They have identifiable paymasters who will respond if constant pressure is applied to them. If the surviving hostages in Lebanon are to be set free, the dialogue of diplomacy must be kept alive.

The British and American public, unfortunately, are caught up in the same pathology of frustration. Some call for air strikes. Others succumb to a strange psychological mechanism that transfers the guilt and tension of the apparently unsolvable problem onto the hostages.

Before the events of last weekend, the attitude of several Americans who talked to me was cynical; they had heard that Lt. Col. William R. Higgins was a spy, and anyone working for the CIA in Lebanon has to take his chances.

I’ve met the same response campaigning for the freedom of my brother, Roger Cooper, a British businessman. He was arrested in Tehran in 1985 while working for McDermott International, an American offshore oil-services group, and he is still languishing in Tehran’s Evin Prison. A senior personnel officer from McDermott said to me, “Your brother was a spy, wasn’t he? I saw his TV confession.” He appeared to be saying that his company didn’t care about my brother because his arrest must have been his own fault.

No one deserves to be kidnaped. To accept the smear stories of the kidnapers is gullible, weak-kneed Western liberalism at its worst. And to believe an apparent TV confession, extracted from a prisoner by threat of violence or worse, is just wrong-headed.

In my brother’s case, the Iranians do not even believe their own allegations. Nearly four years after his arrest, Roger has neither been tried nor convicted. Nor has his family or government ever been told of a single, specific charge leveled against him.

The hostage crisis can only be resolved by a long-term political strategy. Iran learned through defeat in the Gulf War that its foreign policy of xenophobic isolation did not work. The West’s unrelenting diplomatic pressure has borne fruit, and Iran’s foreign-affairs slogan “Neither East nor West” shows signs of moving toward “Both East and West.” Any pro-Western momentum must be nurtured, not squandered.

It shows incredibly crass political judgment by the Israelis to have chosen last weekend for their kidnaping raid. On Friday, the Iranians voted Hashemi Rafsanjani in as president. He no longer has to look over his shoulder to see what the ayatollah wants. The office of prime minister has been abolished. Yet before Rafsanjani has begun work with his Cabinet, Israel has muddied the waters.

Rafsanjani may be president, but his powers are not unlimited. He must maneuver and lead Iran toward the rapprochement with the West he so badly needs to rebuild its war-shattered economy. Lebanon is his Achilles heel, since the Hezbollah zealots are manipulated and financed by his rivals in Iran.

If the present crisis can be peacefully resolved, which is still doubtful, hopes for the hostages look good. The Iranian regime knows that the price of a deal with the West is freedom for all Western hostages. A month ago the Lebanese Hezbollah itself indicated a change of stance, speaking of the kidnapings as “a very big mistake.” And Rafsanjani has expressed “deep regret” over the reported execution of Col. Higgins.

The stakeout is nearly over. All that is needed is a firm resolve and Iran’s terror-loving, anti-Western hard-liners will lose their last gamble for power. All’s on a knife edge. But we can still see our hostages home for Christmas.