The Harvard Negotiation Project played a significant behind-the-scenes role at various points during the Iranian hostage conflict of 1979-81. HNP tools offered unique and penetrating insights into the dynamics of the conflict and the requirements for a resolution, and were used to help effect that resolution in a variety of ways.

On the day the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized by Iranian students, the New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis asked Roger Fisher how many hours he thought the seizure would continue. Fisher, who with Bruce Patton and William Ury had just completed a Currently Perceived Choice Chart for the students and for the Ayatollah Khomeini, replied to Lewis's astonishment that HNP's best guess was 11 months. The reasoning was that the hostage seizure would help strengthen Khomeini's hand against the secular Iranian government, that a critical deadline and fading opportunity (and the Iranians' best chance of an optimal deal) would be just before the U.S. election in November 1980, and that the nearest analogue, the 1967 North Korean seizure of the U.S. spy ship Pueblo, had taken 11 months to resolve.

Soon after, Fisher wrote an op-ed piece capturing this reasoning for the New York Times entitled "Helping the Iranians Change Their Mind." Meanwhile, one of Fisher's LL.M. students introduced him to an Iranian physics student whose brother had been appointed Khomeini's personal representative in the United States. Shortly thereafter, the brother called on a Friday afternoon asking if Fisher would advise the Foreign Minister of Iran about his upcoming Sunday morning appearance on Meet the Press. After checking that the State Department had no objections, Fisher flew to Washington for a conference call at the Iranian Embassy. Fisher's advice, crafted at HNP, was "do not talk about putting the hostages on trial, especially since many of them are people who hate the Shah and transferred to Iran only after the Revolution. If a trial is mentioned, talk about putting the United States on trial for its actions in Iran, with these diplomats as witnesses." Foreign Minister Ghobzadeh followed this advice to the letter.

In January 1980 the U.S. began to discuss imposing sanctions on Iran, and Fisher published a "My Turn" piece in Newsweek entitled "Sanctions Won't Work." HNP's argument: Sanctions change the question from "Can Iran coerce the United States through the illegal detention of diplomats?" - a question that, not surprisingly, evoked enormous sympathy from the world diplomatic community and one to which United States controlled the answer - to the question "Can the United States coerce Iran into releasing these hostages?" - a question that puts Iran in the driver's seat and thrusts the U.S. into a role uncomfortably reminiscent for many foreigners of the "bully" they were used to resenting. HNP argued that President Carter made a mistake in saying he "wouldn't leave the rose garden" until the hostages were released. President Johnson's response to the Pueblo seizure seemed wiser: He denounced the North Korean action as illegal, promised all appropriate efforts to retrieve the crew, and said that for the benefit of those efforts he would have no further comment on the matter until it was resolved.

Fisher's comments were noted in Iran and resulted in several requests from different officials to facilitate productive communication between the two governments. Fisher arranged a meeting with Lloyd Cutler, President Carter's counsel. Cutler asked,* "How do you negotiate with people who are crazy?" Using a Currently Perceived Choice Chart for a typical Iranian Student Leader, Fisher persuaded Cutler that the students might not share U.S. values or perceptions, but they were hardly crazy. (After all, they have insane asylums in Iran, and no one was proposing the students be sent there.) Cutler's response was understandably a little defensive: "Are you saying that we should be doing something different?" Fisher was reassuring, using another Choice Chart, this time for President Carter. The Iranians were telling the U.S. to do something "big and symbolic" as a gesture to get negotiations moving. But the President wisely understood that any such unilateral concession would only lead to escalating demands. (In HNP parlance, Carter was wise to avoid playing "Edward's Game.") Such is the nature of a stalemate: each side is reasonably responding to the situation as they see it by doing nothing.

At this point, HNP began to work even harder to think through the structure of a possible settlement. As always, the approach was to imagine how both sides could announce a "success," and then work backwards to figure out how to create the conditions for that. As part of this work, two "victory" speeches were crafted, one for President Carter, and one for the Ayatollah Khomeini. The critical requirement was that these speeches not be fundamentally inconsistent. Thereafter, we typed these short speech outlines on opposite sides of a piece of paper, and would generate interest in the HNP analysis by allowing people to read first one side and then the other. Inevitably they would exclaim, "But these both work. They're not inconsistent!" Exactly.

Some weeks later, Fisher met with Cutler again. "I've persuaded the State Department that we need to negotiate," Cutler said. "Now we are discussing how much blackmail to pay. What's your advice on that?" Predictably, Fisher responded that the U.S. could not afford to pay any blackmail. "Great!" said Cutler. "You want us to negotiate without being able to pay anything? What kind of advice is that?" "What you need," said Fisher, sharing classic HNP advice, "is a legitimate principle that both sides can live up to, so that neither has to back down or pay blackmail. Something like, 'Neither side will ask for nor receive more than that to which they are entitled.'" "But that's perfectly reasonable," said Cutler. "Do you have any reason to believe the Iranians would accept such a principle as the basis for negotiation?" Fisher: "Are you asking me to find out?" Cutler: "Let me check with the State Department."

Several months passed, during which the United States attempted the ill-fated rescue mission that failed in a desert sandstorm with 8 marines killed, former Secretary of State Ramsey Clark announced his own mediatory mission to Iran against the State Department's wishes and without their permission, and Fisher traveled to China for a month as part of a Harvard Law School delegation. A telling anecdote: In March, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Iran. An Iranian contact called Fisher the next day to exclaim, "Don't you know to consult before taking action?" Fisher reiterated that the U.S. government did not consult with him before acting. The Iranian's frustration was evident: "Don't you know the U.S. could have gotten the hostages released for breaking diplomatic relations? You think it's a punishment, but here they are dancing in the streets! They see the U.S. giving up on trying to control us, which is really most of what we ever wanted!"

In July of 1980, the State Department finally officially asked Fisher to see if he could be helpful. By that time, all but the Foreign Ministry in Iran had come under the control of Khomeini's Islamic Republican Party (IRP), reducing HNP's useful contact list. However, our contacts could get us phone numbers for the Speaker of the Parliament, Ayatollah Rafsanjani, and the head of the IRP, the Ayatollah Beheshti, reputedly the brains behind the show. (Beheshti was later killed in a bomb attack on the Parliament.) Fisher and Patton undertook a series of phone calls with both, who turned out willing to talk, being well informed of Fisher's published articles and activities. In the critical call with Beheshti, after making clear that he was acting with the knowledge but not on behalf of the U.S. government, Fisher asked if Iran was asking for more than that to which it was entitled. The Ayatollah Beheshti's response in his slow, but good English: "No one ever asks for more than they think they are entitled to."

Fisher : "So is Iran prepared to pay its debts?"
Beheshti: "Iran is prepared to pay its just debts."
Fisher: "Fair enough, but what about the resolution of the Iranian Majlis requiring that all claims must be dropped?"
Beheshti: "That could be a problem."
Fisher: "Well, our understanding is that in some cases assets have been attached in the U.S. without invoices ever having been presented."
Beheshti: "That is our understanding as well."
Fisher: "In the U.S., if you sue someone for nonpayment before officially asking them to pay, that is considered quite a hostile act."
Beheshti: "Yes, in Iran as well."
Fisher: "So what if we require all claims to be dropped and then proper invoices to be presented. Iran pays those that seem just, and others can be arbitrated according to well-established principles of international commercial arbitration."
Beheshti: "That would be fine. Now what about the things that Iran is entitled to?"
Fisher: "Like what?"
Beheshti: "First of all, acceptance of the Revolution."
Fisher: "That goes without saying. There is no other government."
Beheshti: "There was no other government in 1956, when Kim Roosevelt of the CIA came to Iran, overthrew the democratically elected government, and returned the Shah to power."
Fisher: "Fair enough. Official acceptance of the Revolution."
Beheshti: "And we want the Americans out."
Fisher: [after a pause] "That sounds like a shared interest."
Beheshti: "Not just the hostages. We want no diplomatic relations."
Fisher: "That could be a problem. I know the U.S. wants relations."
Beheshti: "You are a professor of international law. To what is Iran entitled?"
Fisher: "Under international law, if a country doesn't want diplomatic relations, it doesn't have to have them."
Beheshti: "Good. We don't want them. So, when can you come to discuss this further?"

Beheshti asked for a meeting in his office in four days, but balked at sponsoring Fisher and Patton's visas. Likewise the Foreign Ministry - still in "moderate" hands - also refused to offer visas, knowing the purpose was to assist Beheshti. Finally it was arranged that the powerful Iranian consul in Bonn would order the Embassy in Paris to issue visas, and Patton and Fisher flew to Paris on their way to Tehran. But in the end the lowly functionary who had to sign the visas balked at doing so without explicit authorization from the Foreign Ministry. Fisher and Patton met various Iranians in Europe, but eventually returned to Cambridge and carried on their efforts by telephone and telex. In late August, a draft "one-text" of a possible agreement was sent to Beheshti and Rafsanjani, not as an offer, and certainly not as an official offer, but as something concrete to criticize. The classic HNP question asked, as always, was "What would be wrong with something like this?"

No official reply was received. However, less than a week later, the Ayatollah Khomeini released his "Four Points" statement specifying the requirements for a resolution of the conflict, which notably dropped his prior (unacceptable) demand for an apology from the U.S. Contacts in Iran say that the HNP draft was shown to Khomeini and precipitated this statement, but no one knows exactly what he was told. Based on the "Four Points" announcement, Algeria announced that it would be prepared to mediate a resolution to the conflict. Iran and the U.S. both accepted this offer, and Fisher and Patton immediately met with the Algerian Ambassador to Washington and transferred their working draft and analysis. This HNP framework then became the core structure of the final agreement fleshed out over the succeeding months.

HNP's efforts largely ended at that point, until the day of the hostages' release. As the hours ticked on toward the new President Reagan's inauguration, there was an unexplained delay in the hostages' release. George Corey, a lawyer for the Bank Markazi in Iran, telephoned to share his belief that U.S. banks had added an appendix to the agreed documents requiring Iran to accept as final the banks' accounting of interest paid on Iranian assets that had been seized. This was not a simple matter, and the amount of money involved was potentially quite large.

Fisher telephone Lloyd Cutler at the White House and left a message to call. He then called the Iranian Central Bank in Tehran. He asked for Mr. Nobari, the head of the Bank, but was told he was in a meeting. So he asked for Nobari's deputy, Mr. Monavi-Rad. He too was in a meeting. Fisher asked if it was the same meeting, and was told it was. He then asked the administrative assistant if she would take a message into the meeting telling these gentlemen that he was on the phone. She refused, despite acknowledging that they would probably want to know, offering that the last time she had interrupted the meeting she had been told not to do so again. So Fisher asked if perhaps she could find someone in the building who had not been told that, who could take a note into the meeting, and she cheerfully agreed. Shortly thereafter Mr. Monavi-Rad came to the phone and confirmed Corey's theory of the holdup. "We've been meeting all night," he said, "and we don't know what to do."

While Fisher was talking to Monavi-Rad, Lloyd Cutler called back on the other line. Fisher relayed to Cutler what he had learned and asked him if this appendix was part of the agreement. Cutler confirmed that it was not, and Fisher relayed this to Monavi-Rad. Fisher then suggested that, now that the problem was identified, the two parties communicate officially through the Algerians and work it out, which they did. In the end, President Carter ordered that funds be released without a signature on the disputed appendix, reputedly threatening to blame the banks publicly if the hostages were not released.

*All dialogues in this piece are reconstructions, as there are no recordings or transcripts. However, these narratives have been told in various forums in virtually these exact terms from the days they occurred.