Karbala. Nevertheless, in a subsequent conversation between Naas and Entezam it emerged that the latter was unaware of National Iranian Radio and Television's broadcasts denouncing Iraq. Continuing to seek good relations with Iranian authorities, U.S. officials uncovered considerable evidence of Iraqi support for Kurdish rebels in Iran under the leadership of Jalal Talabani; while these rebels were not considered capable of overthrowing the Iranian government militarily, they were undermining Iranian moderates, prompting Precht to broach the possibility of meeting with Iraqi officials to persuade them that Iraq's support for the Kurds was not in its best interest. Throughout this time, Chris Emery states that Iraq's intentions toward Iran were not entirely clear, as Saddam invited an Iranian delegation to the country following his assumption of the presidency in July, while the CIA concluded in November (despite Cave's warning the previous month) that Iraq sought a diplomatic settlement with Iran. Saddam was willing to work with Iranian moderates such as Yazdi, whom he met in Havana in October, but the collapse of Bazargan's government following the November 4th seizure of the U.S. embassy and initiation of the Iran hostage crisis—and the resulting consolidation of power under Khomeini—"would profoundly change Saddam's decision-making calculus," according to Emery. While the Iraqi archives suggest that Saddam contemplated invading Iran as early as February 1979, he was deterred from doing so until July 1980, at which point post-revolutionary purges had rendered Iran grossly unprepared for the attack. A key July 1980 report by Iraqi military intelligence concluded: "It is clear that, at present, Iran has no power to launch wide offensive operations against Iraq, or to defend on a large scale." Iranian leaders, including Khomeini and his successor Ali Khamenei, have long espoused a belief that the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein a "green-light" to launch the invasion of Iran. U.S. officials have strongly denied this charge. Joost Hiltermann observes that a U.S. green-light is also "the conventional wisdom in the Arab world." In fact, Iranian suspicions that the U.S. would use Iraq to retaliate for the hostage-taking predated the invasion, as Carter noted in his diary on April 10, 1980: "The Iranian terrorists are making all kinds of crazy threats to kill the American hostages if they are invaded by Iraq—whom they identify as an American puppet." There are several reasons for this perception, including some circumstantial evidence. First, although the Carter administration had been interested