As the world becomes increasingly a global village and a postindustrial society, the United States needs to develop short- and long-range policies. Realizing this, the Subcommittee on International Operations of the House Foreign Affairs Committee recently held a series of four hearings to address the overall theme of "The U.S. Department of State in the Twenty-First Century."
These hearings dealt with, among other things, issues pertaining to how foreign policy is made implemented; the selection, tenure, retention and training of State Department personnel; and the critically relevant and contemporary issue of diplomatic security, with some emphasis on the safety of embassy personnel and of the lives and property of U.S. citizens abroad. In the process of pursuing these hearings, the threats to the safety of the lives and property of U.S. citizens abroad and U.S. Embassy personnel occasioned by the crises in China, South Korea, and Mozambique were duly addressed and examined.
Within this context, it is timely and appropriate to examine the nature of U.S. foreign policy toward Iran. November 4, 1989, marked a decade since Iranian students, seemingly with the backing of Iranian officials, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, took 52 U.S. citizens hostage and held them for 444 days. Iran thereby greatly embarrassed the United States in the world arena. This embarrassment culminated in a failed rescue attempt, which killed eight U.S. servicemen, and an attempted manipulation of the political system of the United States by freeing the prisoners on January 20, 1981, the day President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.
These strained relationships between the United States and Iran have since increased markedly, exemplified by the following events:
1. There have been more executions in Iran since August 1989 than in any other country in the world. Predictably, these executions were perpetrated on the opposition. Over the past decade, the Iranian regime has executed approximately 90,000 persons and imprisoned about 1,40,000 for their beliefs.
2. Increasingly, terrorist groups related to Iran have been visiting Iran. President Hashemi Rafsanjani and other high officials in Iran have frequently met with these groups.
3. Internal struggles are currently taking place and are worsening between Rafsanjani and the more militant Islamic members of the parliament (Majlis). There is every indication that the feuding and dissension have intensified significantly in what appears to be a raw struggle for power between the main faction led by Rafsanjani and rival factions consisting of Ahmad Khomeini, the son of the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; Hossein Moussavi, a former prime minister; and Mahdi Karubi, the new speaker of parliament.
4. The new regime in Iran is now clearly anti-Western. It is being equipped with approximately $3 billion in Soviet arms, providing the potential to threaten the stability of the Persian Gulf.
5. Eighteen Western hostages are still held in captivity in Lebanon by groups loyal to Iran, in spite of the fact that Iran offered its help in freeing the captives if its assets held in banks in the United States were released.
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