Facing the Consequences

The Reagan Administration, which entered office pledging that it would cut no deals with terrorists, is now seen to have indeed cut such a deal, albeit at one remove. To win freedom for three Americans held hostage in Lebanon by a group calling itself Islamic Jihad, the Administration has secretly approved and probably initiated some third-country shipments of U.S. arms to Iran, Islamic Jihad’s political supporter and spiritual mentor. This approach was carried out so quietly by the White House that even the secretary of state, who should have been informed, was kept in the dark. The effort achieved the release of three hostages. It also now leaves the United States, which has always exhorted others not to pay ransom to retrieve hostages and not to arm Iran, wide open to charges of hypocritically undercutting its own polices.

Significantly it was Syria, through information given to a magazine that it subsidizes in Beirut, that provided the first definitive word about what was going on. In so doing Syria almost certainly put to a dead stop any further early efforts to continue swapping hostages for military equipment. Two Americans remain the captives of Islamic Jihad. Three more are held by other Lebanese groups. No faction in faction-ridden Iran can afford to be seen as having truck with the United States. As soon as the Beirut magazine story was out, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, who seems to have been involved in the negotiations with Administration emissaries, made haste to deny, denounce and otherwise distance himself from any allegation that he had been dealing with the Great Satan.

By blowing the whistle, Syria was reasserting its ability to play the spoiler in any regional political developments that it dislikes. By blowing the whistle, Syria also gave the lie to its pious assurances that it has been doing everything in its power to win freedom for hostages in Lebanon. What may have disturbed Damascus most of all was an indication that the United States, if still far from restoring normal relations with Iran, was at least trying to foster contacts with those in the Iranian leadership who seem inclined to take a more pragmatic view of Iran’s relations with other countries.

Administration officials wouldn’t be doing their job if they failed to pursue any chance to encourage the more moderate elements in Iran, particularly as the struggle for power and succession in that war-weakened country becomes more open and intense. That worthwhile effort, though, has now become inseparably intertwined with the arms-for-hostages deal that has been exposed. And because such a deal has occurred, because ransom is seen to have been paid, further hostage-taking has been invited. This is precisely what the Administration warned against from the day it took office, even as it urged others to stand firm and uncompromising against the menace of terrorism.

The White House will no doubt plead that it acted out of the most humane of intentions. Its mistake, as perhaps the State Department might have reminded it had it been consulted, was in not thinking more about the inevitable international political consequences that would follow.