Word: ghotbzadeh
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...Iranian leadership was clearly not impressed. At week's end Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh instead complained about persistent reports that Soviet troops were massing behind the Iranian border. If that proved to be true, he said, Iran would "protest fiercely...
...Ghotbzadeh was not the only one to wonder. Nearly a month after the invasion, Western intelligence officials were still perplexed about the Soviets' strategic intentions. One school speculated pessimistically that the number of Soviet troops and the size and sophistication of their weapons were far in excess of what was needed to quell an internal insurgency. Afghanistan, according to these suspicions, could be only a steppingstone on the way to further military aggression, either west into Iran or possibly south into Baluchistan. Straddling both Iran and Pakistan, this area is inhabited by fiercely independent Baluch tribesmen who have long...
Most of America's allies had doubts that the proposed embargo would end the eleven-week-old hostage crisis. They also wondered if the U.S. was wise to go ahead with it in the face of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Iranian Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh boasted that "these kinds of pressures don't deter us at all," and sternly advised other nations to stay out of Washington's "political games." Oil Minister Ali Akbar Moinfar announced that Iran would immediately cut off oil shipments "to any country that joins the U.S. economic boycott against Iran." That...
...political leadership may have been unexpectedly advanced by a week-long tug of war over U.S. Chargé d'Affaires L. Bruce Laingen, who has been held at the Foreign Ministry since the embassy takeover. Two weeks ago, the militants had imperiously demanded that Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh send Laingen to the embassy for questioning about alleged "documents of espionage...
Seeing Laingen as an important liaison for possible future negotiations with Washington and anxious to shore up his own authority, Ghotbzadeh shrewdly referred the matter to Khomeini. Despite the entreaties of a student delegation that visited Qum, Khomeini maintained his silence-thereby tacitly backing his Foreign Minister and the Revolutionary Council, which had originally decided to "harbor" Laingen and two U.S. aides. Said a Ghotbzadeh aide with satisfaction: "I guess we have given the students an idea where the line should be drawn...