JUST over a quarter-century ago, five Iranian college students hit upon the idea of seizing the American Embassy in Tehran and staging a sit-in. Among them were Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is now Iran's president, and Habibollah Bitaraf, the current energy minister. The takeover of the embassy did not play out exactly as its student planners envisioned — indeed, Mr. Ahmadinejad himself initially opposed the move — but as a symbolic step, it not only isolated Iran from the rest of the world, it also rallied millions of Iranians to the idea of a strictly Islamist future. The ensuing hostage crisis made a big splash internationally, but perhaps its most important and lasting consequence was local: it gave the mullahs the leverage to take full power.

It is an old political strategy: identify a foreign enemy, provoke a crisis and wrap yourself in the flag. Today's confrontation with Iran over nuclear research is an example of how, as the saying goes, history rhymes.

...

What does all this have to do with today's nuclear standoff? The embassy occupation in 1979 was viewed by most Americans as a challenge to our world authority and a statement by the Iranian revolutionaries that they wanted to take Islamist rebellion beyond Iran's borders; in fact, it was primarily a well-orchestrated confrontation intended to place the mullahs firmly in power.

Today, as the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, presides over an increasingly restive, unhappy population, his pit bull, President Ahmadinejad, has picked a new fight with the United States of America. Even many Iranians who oppose the theocracy now favor joining the nuclear club; it adds to national prestige and arguably enhances Iran's security. In openly pursuing nuclear power and defying world opinion, the old revolutionaries are shoring up their stature at home by appealing to nationalism and to fears of foreign invasion or attack.

And why shouldn't they? It worked before.