Eagle Claw: America’s Attempt To Rescue Its Embassy Hostages from Iran in 1980
American and Iranian readers over age fifty will recall vividly the Iranian seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November, 4, 1979. The revolutionary Islamist regime took dozens of diplomatic staff hostage. The supposed demand for their return was that the United States should hand over the deposed Shah Reza Pahlavi for a show trial and summary execution. This was after U.S. President Jimmy Carter had allowed the overthrown Iranian monarch into the United States to receive cancer treatment. When Carter did not cave in to this barbaric demand, the Iranian regime made endless propaganda hay out of the embassy and the hostages, whom it paraded blindfolded before television cameras.
Americans were enraged. I was all of ten years old at the time, but I remember the disgust I felt, seeing IRANIANS NOT WELCOME signs go up on local businesses where I lived, as if Iranians fleeing the ruthless new regime for the freedom of America were to blame for Khomeini’s crimes. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to imagine a casus belli more clearly backed by international law for America (“We should turn Iran into a parking lot!” Americans used to say at the time). President Carter, however, was not looking for a war and tried negotiations instead, which predictably failed. In April 1980, he authorized a military mission, led…
