Focus 580; The Crisis: the President, the Prophet, and the Shah - 1979 and the Coming of Militant Islam

On November 4th of this year we mark the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis. And when I say we marked it I guess I should have to say that the chances are an awful lot of people didn't notice at all. It is an anniversary that over the years and this country hasn't gotten very much attention and even apparently in Iran interest in celebrating that day. In recent years has declined. Back in 1909 a small group of Iranian students decided to take the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran and their idea was to in a very public way demonstrate a challenge to American influence and power. And they had in mind something would take two or three days to give them an opportunity to stand up and make statements and that would be that. However of course as you remember this stretched out well past the year mark it took four hundred forty four days. Among other things a lot of people would argue that it marked the end of Jimmy Carter's desire to possibility of serving a second term. Also it was the

beginnings of militant Islam which is now certainly a force in politics and certainly to this day has colored the relationship between Iran and the United States in this part of the show we will look back to the Iran hostage crisis. 979 as we talk with journalist David Harris who has authored a new book it's titled The crisis the subtitle is the president the prophet and the Shah 1979 and the coming of militant Islam it's published by Little Brown. And it is out new in the bookstores if you're interested in reading the book. It just came out a couple of weeks ago should be able to find it in the bookstore. And as we talk of course our guest with our guest David Harris questions are welcome. The only thing that we ask of course is people calling in is that people just try to be brief and we ask that so that we could keep the program moving and get in as many different people as possible. But of course anyone who is listening is welcome to call here in Champaign-Urbana. The number is

3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line. That is good anywhere that you can hear us and that is eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 2 2 2 w. while our guest David Harris is the author of several books including The Last Stand shooting the moon and our war he's also written for The New York Times. Rolling Stone and other publications. He's joining us this morning by telephone. Mr. Harris hello. Good morning. Thanks very much for talking with us. My pleasure we certainly appreciate it. What what was it that made you want to concentrate on obviously the this this was a serious undertaking took a great deal of research and a lot of time I'm sure spent to put this book together what was it the one made you want to explore this particular piece of recent American history. Well it struck me is that this is our whole episode starting with the shock of the fall and ending with the final release of the American hostages. It was

really marked the template for our modern world if you will this was the first head on collision with the route is long and much of what transpired 25 years ago continues to rule the day in our relations with the Islamic has Wi-Fi. I guess that one of the the big questions about how this played out starts with the idea that the students had of doing something that would get the attention of the world. It would give them the opportunity to give them a platform to speak from. But their idea was that this would last a couple of days and that would be that. How is it that something that started out like that ended up stretching on for more than a year. Well there an the short answer of course is that the response in Iran was so overwhelming that the students who had figured to play a kind of Freeman's role in the political situation in Iran instead were

thrust into the very epicenter of the revolution that was going on in Iran at that time. You have to picture that that this at this point the Shah has been overthrown has been out of the throne for almost nine months and during that time he's basically been replaced with a kind of chaos that a provisional government that had some power. But justice was still being meted out on street corners there was there was none of the stability that we associate with an established government there was the attempt being made to act. Finally establish an Islamic republic to replace the Shah but everything was in disorder and in extreme disagreement amongst all the factions that had made the revolution against the Shah in the first place and suddenly the students acted. It struck a resident chord that all the political factions in Iran just point united behind their actions and the public at large started streaming out of the countryside into Tehran to take up a vigil outside of the embassy and then to express their

support for the for the students and have facing that kind of response. The students suddenly recalculated and said they were going to stick around. Their motivation for doing this was that was their perception of what the what they expected the Americans to do at that moment in history we had just admitted the Shah into the United States from his exile in Mexico. For medical treatment and they saw this as a replay of what had happened in 1053 when the United States had installed the Shaw as the absolute power in Iran destroying the embryonic loosely organized democratic government that had been left in place by the British after their occupation of Iran during World War Two and they were the students were expecting it that was that or another replay that the Americans once they got the Shah in the country would set about trying to re install him back in Iran. So in a strange way this

is a hostage episode was the blowback from our first exercise in regime change in 1053 back in Iran and it was something that at the time probably many Americans had forgotten if they knew anything about it at all. Which I guess illustrates the fact that sometimes when we become involved in other countries we we for we forget at our peril that their memories are long often longer than ours. I considerably longer we are the nation of the 30 second. Attention span and not only do we know little about the history of the nations of the rest of the world that we deal with we don't see Rahm remember our own history with them and that you know when we talk about intelligence failures one of one of the intelligence failures that has gone on consistently is that larger American cultural intelligence failure to understand other cultures and what their experience of us is and in this case that those were views were so divergent that the Americans could make no sense out of what would be

motivating the Iranians and the Iranians were in very much the same position. What was Iran like during the time that the Shah was the ruler of the country. Well I went through a transformation that they should have described as his white revolution in which he perceived himself as the great modernizer have A-Rod and set about trying to make it the fourth greatest industrial power in the world. And it had to do this to build roads build dams build schools build industrial plants. It was a blast. In the latter stages of it with an enormous influx of money from Iran's oil holdings which is the second largest in the world and use that to try and make Iran into a state that was on it was not a third world state but a first world state on the par with that.

With that the Great Western nations and has this was his vision and he took significant steps towards that. That in turn helped her also set up the opposition to him because this was enormously disruptive in a traditional culture hasn't who had been living on the countryside were suddenly evicted from the countryside forced into the cities where they became known to man workers or at you know welders or whatever or whatever work they could find in this new industrial Irad were faced with a kind of cosmopolitan culture that they had never encountered before and that among other things the great dislocation of the Iranian population set off a religious revival during the 1970s in Iran that ultimately found a form in the opposition to the Shabab self. We have a couple of callers who will bring him into the converse. Again I maybe I just real quick introduce our guest.

We're talking with journalist David Harris he's written several books in his new one is about the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the hostage crisis. The title of the book is the crisis. It's published by Little Brown and just came out late last month. Questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We do have someone here in Indiana toll free line will go right there first. Hello hello trying to check my memory and I'd wonder if you could say something. Roughly from the time period where the helicopter was downed to the time that the plane trip had been made with the missiles to the final release of the hostages. And I particularly remember I don't know if this is just a bias it shows that my memory or whether this was actually worthwhile in question back and whether or not the Reagan's people before the

election got to choose people who had connections with the hostages and started setting things up and then asking them to wait till after the election before they made a decision. Thanks. OK well the caller poses a number of questions on maybe to take the last one that's one of those enduring things that people have talked about ever since the suspicion that somehow the this was when Mr. Reagan was first running for president against Jimmy Carter there's this suspicion that somehow people connected with the Reagan campaign made contact with the government in Iran and the people who were holding a hostage incident said Wait hold them until after the election. Did you find any evidence that such a thing took place. Well this is the so-called October surprise and and certainly that allegation is been out there is made in several very visible books that came out in the 1980s in hand. Eventually provoked a congressional

investigation that pretty much debunked most of the evidentiary basis that these claims had been made on this so that the Ultimately the investigation concluded that there was no evidence to prove these charges. This is however is believed extensively on the Iranian side. One of the people I interviewed for this book is from Bonnie Saba who was the first elected president of the Islamic Republic and a key figure in the Iranian revolution. And Bonnie daughter recounts being approached in the summer of 1980 before the American election. That fall and by a relative of Khomeini's who came to him and said that he had just had a meeting with the American Republicans in Spain and that they wanted to make a deal surrounding the hostages and the timing of the hostage release and did Bonnie Sautter want to be in on the deal. Bonnie Snyder said he didn't want anything to do with that and the SO was not included on it but that

drew the conclusion which he told to this day that indeed the Islamic Republican Party which was the party of the mullahs in at this point in Iran. Had made such a deal with the Republicans around the timing of it. Another one Marine who believe that was the day who was at the time the foreign minister of Iran who when he resigned in August in 1900 published a long public letter in which he devoted a couple paragraphs to the possibility that which he said was an actuality that the Islamic Republican Party had made a deal with the American Republican Party. So I think this is one of those things that we will never be able to prove or disprove but certainly there isn't substantial enough evidence to make this kind of charge of essentially treason against the Republican Party and its presidential candidates. I think it's interesting that. Looking at the book I guess I didn't really realize that it was in

fact the Republicans who coined the term and their concern was that somehow Mr Carter would manage to get the hostages released right before the election. Yes their polling showed that if Carter was able to get the hostages released essentially during the month of October that he would probably swing at least 10 points in the poll. And and of course happy is in the election in which that would be enough for him to carry the election goes all the way up to the actual date of the election. This race was nip and tuck as too close to call although eventually all the undecideds fell against Carter and gave Reagan the enormous electoral victory and they and they. That wasn't clear until 24 hours before the voting that that was going to happen. I think the caller was also interested in talking about the the rescue attempt and I think maybe what I would like to do is say we will get to that in a little bit when we hold

off on that. And I'd like to get another caller in here. And then of course we'll continue to talk with our guest David Hare's next person in line here is in Champagne and that would be a line number one. Hello. Thank you. I want to applaud. Well as usual for being the only new source which has covered the actual Uranian history they've had a number of speakers over the last year and I think most people who are familiar with at least modern history would know the importance of this whole area of Iran Iraq and Syria during World War Two and why perhaps the cold war decisions were made just something I note is that there is this discussion of chaos after the revolution but when we look at the almost illegally criminal state that was in power in Iran it it makes sense why people were on the quad in 1975 6 when I was a freshman. At the university. Wearing masks with the at that

time down with the Shaw was the chant kill the Shah did not come until almost a year and have a plater but so the history of the. This is just incredible but the part I've never understood is about perhaps the Middle Eastern history and tradition of taking hostages. I think that's something that to me today is still clueless as we're dealing with the hostage taking in our current military conflict. Well what is the history of hostage taking because I think that's the clear misunderstanding is maybe they're engaging in a kind of futile consensus politics that involves the holding of hostages and the taking of hostages that we just totally don't understand it I don't understand it so thank you. Why certainly wouldn't go forward as an expert on hostage taking but that in my own research that one of the things that became apparent was that hostage taking is a far more

traditional. Means of action in that culture than it than it is in ours is unknown in ours but that too is the bargain in in that part of the world that often hostages were given and hostages were held in or day mains to ensure that dead bargains were lived up to so that there is you know this was a far more traditional and if you will accepted procedure than then anything that we could imagine certain and we treated it as an outrage. From the beginning without any of that kind of cultural understanding even with the cultural understanding it may be an outrage and certainly it was a violation of the rules of diplomacy. In no uncertain terms which even the Iranians understood they felt that they were justified in doing so because of the larger mass if you will of the relations between the United States and hand Iran. They felt that the United States had held the Iran hostage for the previous 25 years

by installing the Shah of government in and as its first act of foreign aid to Iran after it installed hashad they helped organize the state security apparatus that eventually tortured tens of thousands of Iranians and and then implemented the Shah's rule with an iron fist. So. There was more to their logic of hostage taking than meets the eye to the average American certainly when Liska to someone on a cell phone here line number four. Hello. Yes I can hear me OK. Yes. Yeah. Since I'm on a cell phone I make a quick comment sitting up and you can answer me and you will show the one comment that was made I didn't realize when you mentioned that the United States I think shot back to the country and the students were afraid that it was going to regain power from what I can remember. I thought he was pretty badly off with cancer and near to it so he the students didn't realize that

or maybe that didn't fall into the equation you know but the other comment I had was what I read and what I've seen about Jimmy Carter that this whole episode completely possessed him. He was not able to detach himself from it and that consequently some of the data most every day with that with this crisis. Also I was just curious as to your comments on that. And then finally the actual takeover itself. Was it accomplished friendly easily. You know was it just kind of a mass invasion or was there any planning to it. And I'm thinking OK so let me let me to ask you to start. Let me pick the middle question the caller asked simply because I think that also helps to explain earlier about how it is that this thing that the students intended to be an event of a couple of days stretched out into more than a year. You talk a little bit about how the people in Iran very quickly came

as sort of rallied around the students and came to support it and it became sort of as far as the Iranians were concerned in the students a different sort of thing. You also when you ask this question how is it that it managed to stretch into 444 days you also have to look at the American reaction which may indeed go to Mr. Carter's personal reaction. Absolutely. You know they are one of the as one of the hostages pointed out to me when I interviewed him and the you know that if you if you're bargaining with an Iranian at the bazaar if you're going to be able to make a deal the one thing you have to be able to do is walk away from the stall. And threaten to collapse the altogether before you're going to be able to make a deal. And such was our obsession with this event in the holding of the hostages that the. There was never a point where we could walk away from the from the stall. We were we were stuck in it and they knew we were stuck in it which only increased his value to them in terms of their own

internal politics. And certainly Jimmy Carter walked right into that. You know in the initial days of the crisis that Carter was scheduled to take a trip to Canada which he intended to do but his chief adviser Hamilton Jordan came to him and said look you in this circumstance you can't leave the country. You know people will never understand they want you to be in Washington at the helm of the ship. And so Carter cancelled his this is trip to Canada and then started canceling every other trip outside of Washington that he was supposed to make and has got himself cornered so that Dave is now the assumption in the Carter White House that nothing was more important in that Carter could not go out leave the helm of the ship if you will until this was was dealt with so that he not spent the next six months in what was called the Rose Garden strategy where he basically never left the White House and this became his paramount concern. And I think was on a very emotional level for Carter. You know Carter was identified with the people who work for him and in this case those diplomats were being held

hostage and they were his primary concern him and laughed at as a primary concern for the rest of his presidency from the remember. Second of all I have. Nineteen seventy nine on going to the last question the caller asked and I suppose that again is one of the things when you think back at you one of the basic questions is how is it that a handful of students managed to take over an American embassy when it was was this a it was this and that certainly there were guards in fact one of the Marine guards lives here in who was their lives here in there. Champaign Urbana in the area. There were certainly Marine guards but not in sufficient numbers to be able to really keep her in any significant crowd off of an embassy. You know we're talking a couple dozen Marines at the max. And so that you know we shouldn't assume that there was the military capacity there to seriously repel what we were counting on of course was the protection provided mostly provided by the host government which had

a group of revolutionary guards stationed around the embassy who protected and had been doing a significant job of protecting it. This again is surrounded by the chaos of going on Tehran when there were almost daily marches of as many as a million people at the time often going by the American Embassy shouting Mark bar America Death to America. But you know as the revolutionary guards who were there had succeeded in basically protecting them from this crowd. In this case that the Revolutionary Guard that had cut a deal with the students to let them in so they just simply climbed over the gate and mery inside the compound and the Americans shot themselves into the chancery building kind of like a turtle's locked up in a shelf and openly were forced to forced to surrender. And there were there were no physical means to resist it. Ironically this was taken as a great surprise by Americans. This is some kind of ambush they had never imagined. But the truth was that this this possibility had been part of American calculations for and

for nine months almost leading up to to the takeover of the embassy in on Valentine's day of that year and February. The embassy had been taken before a group of armed leftist guerrillas had attacked too with an automatic weapon seized the 26 acre embassy compound and seized the diplomats and held them for a couple hours until the provisional government was able to intervene and convince the leftists to leave. So from that point on the possibility that the embassy would be taken in the fashion that it was was part of American calculations and every time the Carter White House asked the embassy. If they should admit the shot to the United States the embassy responded every time that if you do so we cannot guarantee the safety of the embassy or of the diplomats that are here. And in fact the embassy was running on a relatively skeletal basis that by the time that it was finally taken over without nearly the staffing it normally has them with a lot of its documents shipped back to United

States for protection. The Also the call as a question about you were talking about the fact that the Iranian students when the Shah was admitted and was made of the United States for a for medical treatment they started to worry that perhaps this was a sign that the United States intended to put the Shah back into power. The fact is that he was very ill and I don't believe lived very much longer after that which was where the details about his medical condition and well-known known enough so that people would have known that. That certainly he. He didn't have that long to live at that point. Well his medical condition had been the had been hidden quite successfully and he had been suffering from a lymphoma that was first diagnosed in 1074 and he didn't need his own wife did not even find out he had it for three years after he was diagnosed. He refused to go in the hospital because that would give a clear indication that this that he was indeed sick and he thought that would be used by his enemies. He had never had his. His illness had never been made

public and was unknown until right before he asked to enter the United States and reveal that he in fact was suffering from cancer and the cancer was extreme. And indeed he was a dying man and he would die within eight months after he entered the United States. But this was not known to the Iranians and they did not trust the American version of that. When the American Embassy sent the delegation over to meet with the provisional government before they admitted the Shah and and told them that they were going to let the Shah into the country one of the things the provisional government asked for is can we have an Iranian doctor examined these records and the Shar himself to verify that indeed he is ill. Americans refuse that request every time it was made it was made a number of occasions. So for most Iranians they thought this was more American perfidy and that they were were not going to accept to the United States word that in fact this trial with this kind of sex and even if he was if he was sick and was in the threat

most terrains felt that they had the right to bring him back to the to Iran and try him for the crimes that he had committed against the Iranian people not unlike how the Iraqis intend seem to be intending to deal with Saddam Hussein. And they felt they had the right to to get this criminal back who they felt had not only abused them but stole them a great deal of their money and that was also motivating the students but that nobody in Iran accepted that the Shah was this kind of sick. Past our midpoint we have another call I will get right to. I would like to reintroduce our guest for the benefit of anyone who's just tuned in. We're talking with David Harris. He's the author of a number of books including a brand new one that's titled The crisis the president the prophet and the Shah. One thousand seventy nine and the coming of militant Islam is published by Little Brown. David Harris has written for a number of publications including The New York Times and Rolling Stone. And he's joining us this morning by telephone and questions are welcome 3

3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 we do have another caller here someone in Rantoul nearby. Line number one. Hello. You know yes. Thank you for having Mr. Harris on the first point I was going to make you've already alluded to in the fact that I believe the gentleman's name is Paul Davis a local businessman Lewis who was a Marine and all of us all of us thanks. He's a local businessman now and he was a Marine hostage at the embassy there which I would think would be interesting if you were to carry his program and call him that would have some unique insights there. I have a couple of questions for Mr. Harris. There are more general but I'm sure you've thought and pondered these a freshness How much do you think that hatred of the United States in the Middle East in general is based on our complete support for Israel and how much of it is based on our side. We're in our past actions to control that area for American business. And the second question is an

obscene speculation but how do you think this current situation that we find ourselves in in the Middle East in the United States will change or work itself out. And I would like to hang up and listen to that answer please. All right. Thank you. Well I let me start with that. The issue of hatred for the United States I think is while we tend to perceive that hatred as somehow emerging out of the cosmos in direct form is so simply by virtue of who we are people hate us in fact is it in a practical way that they have a great deal more to do with the way we have behaved historically than this. And it's some kind of cultural resentment per se I think is obviously in Iran. There was an enormous resentment for the support of the United States for that dictator that had been ruling the country and who many perceive as an

abomination and that there was a desire to hold the United States accountable for that. I think certainly looking at the wider region our. Alliance with Israel and continued support of the Israeli positions whatever they might be has significantly undercut our standing in the Islamic world and our refusal to recognize that that's how important that situation is one of the things that continues to exacerbate it. But I think it's a mixture of a number of elements of that breeds this kind of hatred. But I think most of them have to do not with some kind of cosmic principle but with with our own behavior and in terms of how the current situation is going to play out. Boy I wish I really understood that. You know if I had the answer to that I would be a far better position than I am.

I think that that. We have allowed ourselves to be maneuvered into a position where we are perceived as the enemies of Islam and as long as we are in that position we are in a no win situation and the task facing us is to figure out how we develop a new kind of relationship with these people and I think the beginning of it is to simply engage in dialogue. You know one of the amazing things about our relations with Iran is that during this entire hostage crisis they're only twice that that there was a direct connection between an official of the United States an official of the US have the Islamic Republic. Both of those even as part of secret negotiations that were were never made public until well after the fact and the. The there has been in the 25 years since that crisis was over there has been no direct contact. Our relations with Iran are continue to be

funneled through this with the embassy there. We are not engaged in any kind of direct conversation. And I think it's impossible for us to imagine a way out of this situation if we don't at least begin to talk and begin to develop some standards for behavior that all the countries in that part of the world and ourselves can live up to. And for example that the current crisis with Iran with Iran's desire to develop its nuclear capacities at least in for a peaceful generation of electricity and food with some possibility that just might be being used as a potential base for weapons systems. It fit to your approach to the situation simply by claiming this is an Iranian problem misses the scope of what we're dealing with. Weapons of Mass Destruction are attractive to all kinds of governments in the world because they are leverage and they I at least in today's world they are the one guarantee that the Americans will not invade

and change your regime and that is the possession of those kind of weapons and your ability to use them. Certainly in that region where we have already accepted the illegal development of atomic weapons by Pakistan our ally and by Israel our allies said nothing about those and made no attempt to redress that violation of international standards. And now I thankfully I have adopted a policy of look towards weapons of mass destruction that we get to choose. Whoever is going to have them and who is not going to have them. Which is no way to to reach any kind of solution. You know I think it we're going to have to step back and find genuine international solutions that are not dictated by us. If we're going to find the answers in that part of the world I want to go back to one of the questions an earlier caller asked. I believe he was interested in having you talk about the rescue attempt which ultimately was a failure. How is it that the administration decided to choose the those means

and to try to use military force to get the hostages and how is it that. It seemed and in so many respects to go wrong. Well I went when the hostages were first taken. There was the immediate impulse to find some kind of military action with which to rescue a member in the context of the time the Israeli several years before had rescued some very hostages from in Tevye in Africa and this was kind of the model that was being held up. The United States had just a form form then they're gone through the initial training of its first the kind of anti-terrorist commando group the Delta Force and the immediately as the crisis broke out. The joint chiefs of staff reported that there was no military means that they could take in the immediate moment but that they proceeded to plan this mission and do training for it as a possibility down the line. In the meantime

Carter looked for ways to negotiate with the Iranians which was difficult because hard to find somebody to talk to. Ultimately there was a set of secret negotiations in which Hamilton Jordan represented the United States and ended up having. Secret meeting with a starting coach for a day who was at that time the foreign minister of Iran attempting to work out some kind of scenario whereby Iranian demands could be satisfied the Americans get their hostages back and the situation could be resolved. They went through several attempts and they're working that out until finally by the April of 1080 and the last of those attempts fell through. Carter lost its patience and was advised by his military advisers that if he wanted to to do this rescue mission he was going to have to do it soon because a logistics involved would change when summer began and the nights became shorter and so he made the decision at that point

to go forward with that he made that decision in a meeting where Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was not even present he was out of town at the time didn't learn about it till after he came back. Vance made a futile attempt to try and convince him to change his mind and convince the cast the rest of their presidential advisers to to do the same and was unsuccessful at that and so I handed in his resignation before the before that the mission was launched. The mission where he had his complain about the mission was this was an enormously complex military operation and his experiences previously at the Defense Department was whenever you had an enormously complex operation like this something always went wrong and something would go wrong with this and this was the planning on this was so tight that if anything went wrong it was not going to work. The plan was essentially to dispatch the American Delta Force in the C-130 transport it would rendezvous with a core of eight helicopters flown off of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. They would rendezvous in the out in the in the

unoccupied Iranian desert at that point the Delta Force would board the helicopters and helicopters would refuel on the fuel brought in by the C-130s and the helicopters would fly to a location outside of Tehran where everybody would hide for the forward. Despite all this staging was all done at night and as daylight came they were supposed to be at their hiding place they would hide there all day during the daylight. The following night. The Central Intelligence Agency spies that it's been the infiltrated into Tehran would come out and meet them with trucks. The Delta Force would drive into Tehran and trucks reach the embassy blow through the embassy wall kill as many of the students as as they ran in to grab the hostages take them across the street to a soccer stadium where the helicopters would arrive pick everybody up fly them to an abandoned military base outside of Tehran or American C-130s would fly in again that helicopters would abandon everybody would be flown out. That was the plan. The plan only got as far as the desert itself. What would have happened if they had gotten into Tehran is an open

question the only study the government did of what was going to come down if this plan went forward was done by the CIA several weeks before the mission took off its calculation was that if the mission went forward that probably 60 percent of the hostages would have been killed in the process. We will never know that because when they landed out in the desert things had already started going wrong. The helicopters had had a horrible trip and they'd been through two sandstorms to get across the great Arabian desert. When they finally landed three of the helicopters had been disabled and couldn't go forward. That left them with only five helicopters which was not enough lifting power to to perform the mission so they had to abort it and then turn everybody around to go home in the process of turning around to go home. One of the helicopters ran into one of the fuel planes. There was an explosion. Eight Americans were burned to death. You know a copper's had to be abandoned in some cases including the the high security papers in them that

describe the mission that they had they were on which were not destroyed before they left. And the whole operation came home and he is an abject failure. The Iranians never even knew it was happening until the United States announced that they had tried it and it had failed. And then it was just simply beyond our military reach. We were trying to do something that we did not have the wherewithal to do. And this was part of the larger I think restoration that that really defined the American end of the crisis which is. And one of being confronted with their own impotence in the situation we were dealing with something we could not control and the timing at which we couldn't control openly to resolve this we had to be patient wait for the Iranian internal political situation to sort itself out. And when that happened ultimately there were successful negotiations that brought the hostages home. But of course not in time to save Jimmy Carter in the election. I just have a couple people want to get to but some Another point I think that's really interesting and is

when one thing that we know we've heard a lot about with the current administration and its policy in the Middle East and the decision to go into Iraq is about infighting within the administration. It's very strong differences of opinion about which way to go particularly between the Department of State and the the security advisor at the White House and the Pentagon. And I suppose we shouldn't think that something like that would be so unusual. A lot of that goes on in every administration but in this particular case there was indeed a lot of argument within the within the cabinet and within the White House between the security advisor between the secretary of state between people who are devising the. President and it certainly didn't help Mr. Carter. Absolutely no there was that the Pentagon didn't play a big role in that division in this administration but the division was between the secretary of state and the State Department and the National Security Council in the National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. And that that

division was dramatic and that had been part of the administration throughout its its tenure was a big source of disagreement when the Shah was falling with a big source of disagreeing about how to relate to the Iranian revolution after the Shah fell and was a big source of disagreement about how to relate to the hostage crisis where essentially Brzezinski the national security adviser was constantly looking for more forceful military means to to regain the national honor as he sought advantage was looking for ways to ameliorate the situation to find to come to some common terms and to bring his diplomats home. So these two forces were at extreme odds inside the administration It certainly didn't help anything and ultimately lead to Vance leaving the administration over this issue. Let's talk to some of the callers now. Stop the champagne on one eye great discussion. The speaker had mentioned in the 1700s there was a religious revival. Could you

mention about in Iran today if religion is very important. You know there is the theocracy there. But are most Iranians very religious and or are they prior to the revolution could you talk about that. Well certainly there's going to be as in any culture in Iran there's been an ebb and flow of that kind of religious fervor. And perhaps there was never a point where it was higher than during the days that I've written the crisis about that you know that that part of that was just the person of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who was the great leader who is hard figures for us as Americans to imagine because he was like a combination of both the president and the pope at the same time. And man of enormous religious standing who also had enormous political standing because of his longtime opposition to the Shah who was the figurehead of an enormous revolution inside Iran. I mean when he returned to Iran from exile after the Shah had left. 10

million Iranians according to Le Monde correspondent who is there at the time turned out into the streets to welcome him home or in 10 million we're talking about Greater Chicago and greater Los Angeles out in the streets together to welcome one man home. And so that that there was an incredible burst of religious fervor that states that join forces with the nationalism. And that has always been true of the Persian culture and that in the years since I think a lot of that fervor has has ABS the fight taking power the the religious forces have that have lost some of their credibility ultimately because they're held responsible for the state of affairs in hand and that kind of discredited nation has been going on pretty steadily. Inside Iran on a cultural level I don't. Think it's to the point that there is going to be any kind of political revolution against the first say but there is an enormous cultural revolution with the kind of control that the religious leadership has brought. Certainly among the educated parts of the

population in those parts of the population there will better off and the want to be part of the current world culture in hand. So certainly I guess I would say that religious fervor in Iran today is not nearly as remarkable as it was 25 years ago but is still an enormous factor and an obviously holds sway. Can I ask another question about that. Would 10 million people have turned out in the streets to welcome a communist or a greater democracy advocates was religion so essential to this opposition to the shawl or if anybody else had been a strong critic of the Shah would they have been so well received by the the people of Iran. No nobody but Khomeini would have gotten that response. Because of his kind of legendary that status and hand it was always an assumption amongst the Iranian revolutionaries even the secular ones in the even the communist ones that the only way that they would be able to get to the masses in order to really make their case against the Shah was to

to get in through the mosques. I see that was a mass base and that had that that's what this brought not just the intelligentsia to this issue had been to this issue for a long time but also brought to the average an Iranian working stiff out so that said to them the mosques provided an enormous base for the for the revolution and the way could not have succeeded without it and it was that confluence of of the political and the religious coming together that made this revolution happen. But the Iranian Revolution was remarkable because it involved the entire spectrum of Iranian political position all joining together and accepting the leadership of Khomeini. They had you know many of these factions at the time they were making a revolution of the Shah against the Shah. I thought that they could use Khomeini. He was an old man you know a religious figure they figured that they could use him for their purposes and discard him when the time came. And it happened to work the opposite way where

Khomeini used the secular and political forces for his own ends until he didn't need them any more than he discarded them. Witness the you know the it's the fate of two of those of the leaders of that the secular part of the Iranian revolution who were incredibly critical were awesome Bonnie solder who became the first president in the eventually was forced into exile and now lives outside of Paris and Sadegh both today the foreign minister who with had been a key revolutionary figure who ultimately was executed by Khomeini and in 1902 so what happened was you know the people who are trying to ride the fox across the river ended up in the belly of the fox. Thank you. Well thank you let's try and get at least one more we'll hear champagne County. Into a low high and so little time I wanted to mention you sort of on the October surprise I know it's a very complicated story and you don't want to. You didn't rule it out but I think we should mention Bob Perry's excellent new work on this

as well as the Gary Sick book that was written contemporaneously. And it ties into what we were just talking about with the other caller which is this. There was a large secular part of the revolution bunny solder being the most important of that. And if there was this kind of betrayal it set the stage for the further betrayal of the deals with the mullahs in their own hans contract crisis and basically what it implies is that it it cemented the rule of the Islamists and I know that's something you dwell on I know one of your major points of the book is that. You know this is where radical Islam was nurtured and fed but if the if the trail really happened as if there is new evidence of it keeping that quiet would would have cost hush money as well and it sort of cemented which is you know betraying the left the secular left was one thing that. The Reagan administration saw as its as its grand mission as well so if you could. I don't know if you can tie that all together and tie it in

in a couple of minutes here but I appreciate the show thank you. Well it's a you know it's certainly the betrayal of the secular left inside of Iran was going on simultaneously to the hostage crisis and indeed you know the hostage crisis was one of the principal political implements used by the religious right inside of Iran to solidify its power its. It enabled them to keep the population in a state of arousal if you will and exercised over the Americans in the role of the Americans and caught up in their in their visceral response to the Americans and their role in. Iranian history and obvious skated at a number of the other issues of the possible totalitarian possibilities that were coming along with the of Lamictal public that was addressing these questions and. And I think it. That's it.

As long as they needed the that state of that I have anger out in the population. They work they have a hostage crisis as much as they could when it finally when the end Islamic government had been finally established and the mullahs were in control of the new Iranian parliament and they were rapidly taking control of the executive branch and Khomeini had been established as the supreme religious guide of the new Islamic Republic. They didn't need to do that anymore and they could. They could then switch and and that and make negotiations with the Americans but the possibility of that deal with between the mullahs in the Americans was a political issue. After the hostages were released and in the final showdown between Bani Sadr and and the religious forces inside of Iran Bani Sadr became the principal critic of the deal that had been cut with the Americans and the process whereby it had been cut and part of the reason that the that he became such a such a threat that he was forced out of the country

was his insistence on talking about that subject. Wearing all that helps you get it and we're going to have to stop and I'm really sorry I'm sure we could keep going it's a very complicated story there are a lot of facets and if people are interested in reading more they should definitely look at the book that mentioned a couple of times here by our guest. Again the title of the book is the crisis the president the prophet and the Shah 1979 and the coming of militant Islam it's published by Little Brown just now by our guest David Harris and Mr. Harrison Well thank you very much for talking with us. It was my pleasure.