2 Months of Maneuvers Led to Hostage Release : Diplomacy: What seemed sudden wasn’t. Hopeful signals were sent from Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

John Craig, the preppy, bow-tied political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, got the first word Wednesday morning.

Summoned abruptly to the columned, neoclassical Syrian Foreign Ministry, he was greeted by Farouk Shareh, the Syrian foreign minister. Within 48 hours, Shareh told Craig with solemn pride, the U.S. Embassy should expect to receive the first American hostage set free since Nov. 2, 1986.

By 7 a.m. Washington time, Craig’s coded cable, marked “Flash,” the highest priority, had been transmitted for simultaneous distribution to the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. Secretary of State James A. Baker III received a copy as he walked into his office a few minutes later.

But despite notice of an impending breakthrough on a matter that only scant years ago had dominated the attention of the White House, the reaction was subdued. Too many hints of promise had turned sour in the past. Too many times, the pieces of the tortured hostage puzzle seemed to be coming together only to fragment again. Officials decided to keep the alert secret.

They began to surrender to a glimmer of optimism only after they heard a Cable News Network bulletin at 12:43 p.m. that the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine had issued a communique announcing its intention to free an American--a message authenticated by a photograph of hostage Jesse Turner.

“At that point, a lot of us thought we actually might be in business,” said a counterterrorism specialist. “A lot of people began to smile.”

This picture of how the U.S. government first heard of an impending hostage release, and of the diplomatic maneuvering that followed it, was pieced together from interviews with a variety of Administration and State Department sources, as well as with officials in various Middle East countries.

Although the announcement on Wednesday came as a surprise to most of the world, these sources said, it in fact represented the culmination of behind-the-scenes maneuvering over the last two months by a wide cast of characters, including Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and his brother, Syrian envoys and military officials and the Lebanese captors.

Ever since Lebanese terrorist groups began seizing Americans in 1984 to gain leverage to achieve their demands, a full array of official and unofficial parties interlocking in a multitude of ways had schemed to free the Americans--but had failed. At least one person, British Anglican envoy and trouble-shooter Terry Waite, was himself abducted in the attempt.

But this time, a fragile network managed to pull it off.

“We don’t have all the details yet. In fact, we may never know the whole story. But it appears that a lot of factors, some not even related to the hostages, came together,” said a State Department official. “At least for Robert Polhill, we found a formula that worked.”

U.S. officials now trace the turning point to a flurry of signals in late February and early March from Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

The first was a Parliament speech on Feb. 20 by the Iranian president on what was scheduled to be a budget debate. Instead, it revealed a major foreign policy shift in Tehran--although in somewhat obtuse language.

“As far as the international situation is concerned, the world is moving toward a single bloc. As a result, a great deal of the opportunities that existed in the world for independent countries to take advantage of the competition between the powers is being lost,” Rafsanjani told Parliament. He continued:

“Hostility between the powers is to some extent being changed into a kind of understanding, mainly in the direction of giving a free hand to those who are hostile towards us and who are bent on animosity against us, rather than being our friends.”

Commented a leading American expert on Iran expert: “In other words, glasnost , the new thinking in the Soviet Union, to a certain extent forced new thinking in Iran.

“Iran realized it could no longer play the Soviet Union off the United States . . . . With Moscow embroiled in its own troubles, the West was the only way out of Iran’s growing number of problems.

“Tehran began to see that it couldn’t get anything meaningful from the West while hostages were still held in Lebanon.”

And with 40% unemployment, 50% inflation and a soaring black market, Iran needed something meaningful.

Seventeen days after his budget speech, Rafsanjani told a news conference, “My feeling is that the issue of the hostages is moving toward a solution.”

The statement was not just lip service. Rafsanjani had already dispatched his brother, Mohammed Hashemi, head of the Middle East department at Iran’s Foreign Ministry, to Beirut. Among his assignments there was to talk with officials of Hezbollah, or the Party of God, which is the umbrella group for most, and maybe all, of the groups holding American hostages.

“We think this (February) trip may have been the first time Iran indicated to its Lebanese allies that it wanted to see an American freed,” said an Administration source who closely monitors the hostage crisis. “It was, in effect, the opening move.”

Meanwhile, in Damascus, the Syrian government was also responding to the gentle but insistent pressure--or “jawboning,” in the words of one U.S. official--of U.S. Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian. The envoy, who is of Armenian descent and speaks fluent Arabic, is noted for the close relationship he has developed with Syrian President Hafez Assad, who tends to keep Western ambassadors at arm’s length.

Some of the same pressures shaping Iran’s new thinking were also influencing Assad’s government. Worried by cutbacks in Soviet aid and aware that Moscow could no longer exert pressure to ensure Syria’s inclusion in the Mideast peace process, Damascus also began looking westward.

In mid-March, Assad held extensive talks with Jimmy Carter during the former President’s two-day visit to Damascus. Carter said Syrian officials pledged to locate the hostages and persuade their captors to release them.

Within a week, Shareh, the Syrian foreign minister, hand-carried a letter from Assad to Rafsanjani.

Upon his return, the U.S. Embassy in Damascus was informed that Iran was willing to move, officials in Washington confirmed. It all sounded too familiar, however, for anyone to get too excited.

Then, Rafsanjani’s brother went back to Beirut--again for talks with Hezbollah.

“Looking back, it all begins to fit together,” said the U.S. Iran expert.

But, as time wore on, nothing appeared to come out of the initial signals. Skeptics within the Bush Administration decided that Syria, in its role as facilitator, could not put together the right package.

Then came last Wednesday’s call to Craig--and the beginning of a five-day emotional roller-coaster ride for the Administration and the hostage families.

U.S. officials now concede there were some close calls, especially after the White House rejected the captors’ demand that Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly fly to Syria to “receive” the hostage and work out final details. The move was, in effect, a bluff.

“We couldn’t get ourselves into the position of giving even an inch,” said the source who monitors the hostage crisis. “The next time around, it would be a mile.

“This was the time to set precedents” for all hostage releases, he added. “Both sides knew that. So, we crossed our fingers and said no.”

Whisked back to Damascus from a conference in Bonn on Thursday, Djerejian took over. U.S. officials credit him with persuading Shareh and others that Washington, badly burned in past encounters, really had no choice. Shareh relayed the message.

Djerejian “is really cool under fire,” said one of his State Department colleagues. “He wasn’t discouraged when the news of the delay broke on Friday. He just kept pressing” in twice-daily meetings at the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

The Syrians, clearly embarrassed by the last-minute delay, kept coming back to seek clarification and suggest compromises. But Djerejian stood firm, according to State Department sources.

U.S. officials say the one missing component is the specific role Iran played during the standoff over Kelly. “We know it was crucial, that Tehran had to be the one to say, ‘Go ahead anyway.’ We just don’t know how it played out,” said the U.S. Iran expert.

On Friday and Saturday, the sterile white corridors in the State Department were alive with debate over just what amount of control Tehran had over the three groups holding the eight Americans. The general conclusion, according to the U.S. Iran expert, was that Iran, having given birth to the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon in 1982, had problems with its increasingly independent offspring.

By Saturday, however, the signals were suddenly back in place. Shareh announced that the release was on again. In the evening, Djerejian was sufficiently relaxed to invite the American media for cocktails at his home.

By early Sunday morning, an unofficial task force had been mobilized in the State Department’s seventh-floor suite. Tension was high. A phone line was kept open to the U.S. Embassy in Damascus for any breaking news.

By noon in Washington, night was settling in Damascus, and skeptics thought the effort had, yet again, failed.

Then, about 1 p.m. Djerejian sent word that Syrian troops in Beirut had taken custody of a hostage. His name was Robert Polhill.

Wright reported from Washington and Williams from Damascus.