The Iran Hostage Crisis

It was 40 years ago today that the U.S. embassy in Tehran was overrun and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. A very informative discussion of this was on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" yesterday.

In my presidential rankings, I was quite hard on Jimmy Carter for permitting this crisis to develop. I said he had intelligence reports that our embassy wold be overrun if he allowed the Shah into this country, but he did it anyway, his excuse being that the Shah needed medical treatment only available in this country. Since this proved later to be false, as the doctors were willing to go down to Mexico City to treat him, I concluded that Carter had lied to us.

Carter adviser Stu Eizenstat presented an informative account on the C-SPAN show of Carter's handling of  the crisis. It turns out that it was more than just one or two reports that our embassy would be overrun; rather, Carter was repeatedly warned quite strongly that the embassy would definitely be in jeopardy. However, a major factor at that time was the ongoing Cold War, and evacuating the embassy would have allowed free rein to the Soviets to exert more influence in Iran, and Iran was seen as an important bulwark against communism in that part of the world. Hence, we stayed with a skeleton contingent.

Carter resisted allowing the Shah into the country for a long time, but he finally relented based on two state dept. doctors saying he needed treatment only available in the U.S. Apparently he didn't bother to obtain an independent opinion from a neutral doctor. Eizenstat admits that this advice was false, and treatment could have been rendered in Mexico City, as it turned out. So, perhaps the word "lie" is too strong, if Eizenstat's account is to be believed. But he was certainly negligent and incompetent in his handling of the matter.

As to his handling of the crisis once it developed, Eizenstat stresses that Carter did eventually get all of them out unharmed, which was the goal all along. And Eizenstat does feel that the crisis was the cause of losing the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan. He says that as of the Sunday before the election, Carter was even or a little ahead in the polls. Then, he got word of a possible peace initiative, and he canceled his campaign stops and flew back to  Washington from Chicago, which Eizenstat says was a huge mistake. The peace offer could and should have been responded to from where he was in Chicago, and didn't require flying home. Carter's handling of this made him look weak and ineffectual, like he was so desperate for the hostages' release that he would do anything, and then it still led to no progress.