For the staff of TIME, major international events often do not simply happen--they unfold slowly, develop subtly, provoke reactions from other parts of the world and change course with maddening unpredictability. So it was with the crisis over the seizure by Iranian students of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the subject of this week's cover story.

Though the embassy compound fell to the mob quickly enough, the standoff that followed kept taking on new subplots, complications and even characters: the P.L.O., the Pope, the United Nations, Muhammad Ali. Said Senior Editor John Elson, who supervised the coverage: "It's a cover story with more imponderables and mysteries than any we've done in a long time."

International events have certainly produced their share of TIME covers in the past two years: 32, of which six have dealt at least in part with the fast-shifting fortunes of Iran. Associate Editor William Smith, who wrote last winter's cover on the Persian Gulfs "Crescent of Crisis," is responsible for the main narrative this week. As he did with most of the 40 cover stories he has handled in his nine years as a TIME writer, Smith assembled this one under a steady rain of TIME correspondents' files--from the tumultuous streets of Tehran, from the tense corridors of the White House and the State Department, from the scenes of hostile confrontations between angry Americans and Iranian students in the U.S. Correspondent Peter Stoler, for many years TIME's Medicine writer, contributed an assessment of the Shah's medical problems. Associate Editor Burton Pines, the magazine's defense specialist, analyzed the limited U.S. military options in Iran.

But no one had a more difficult role in the cover story than Middle East Correspondent Bruce van Voorst in Tehran.

Van Voorst was TIME's bureau chief in Tehran earlier this year, and so he was returning to familiar territory when he rushed to Tehran from Beirut immediately on hearing of the capture of the hostages. Among the problems he faced on his return: unruly mobs, intermittent breaks in telephone and telex communications, and a power blackout that forced him to type one long report by flashlight. Arriving in Iran under extraordinary conditions, however, is not new for Van Voorst: nine months ago he was on the same plane with the Ayatullah Khomeini on his triumphal return from exile outside Paris.

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