The Iranian Revolution And Hostage Crisis

Considering this week's events, this would be a good time to review the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Hostage Crisis for three reasons.

First is that the Iranian Revolution is faltering from within Iran. But it has already greatly changed the world, as part of the revolution series that began with the French Revolution.

Second is that the U.S. operation to capture the President of Venezuela was very much a do-over of the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the hostages being held in Iran in 1980. It looks like it even involved the same number of helicopters. The major difference was that refueling wasn't necessary in the Venezuela operation, so there was no "Desert One" stop.

Third is that the protests in Iran, over the decline in the currency, are like a mirror image of the original Iranian Revolution. The son of the late, exiled Shah of Iran is directing protests in Iran, just as did Ayatollah Khomeini from his exile house near Paris during the original Iranian Revolution. The major difference is in the technology used. Khomeini used a land line telephone, along with cassette tapes of his sermons and interviews with the western media. The son of the Shah, who would be Shah himself if the family was still in power, is using social media.

We saw the Iranian Revolution in "The Great Revolution Of Our Time", January 2017. This is the most recent reenactment of the French Revolution, which opened the modern political era.

The world was moving definitely in the direction of secularism since the French Revolution and it's first major reenactment. The Iranian Revolution turned the direction back toward religion and it is all around us today. The tremendous influence of the Iranian Revolution has gone far beyond Islam.

The Iranian Revolution has long since arrived in America, although we don't see it as such. Religion used to be banned from public schools in America. Now some states, in the Bible Belt, require schools to display various Christian symbols. A recent report that I read is that barely half of American adults now drink alcohol at all. I remember when there used to be lewd and crude bumper stickers on cars, that are not seen anymore.

Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution and then the Supreme Leader of the country until his death in 1989, once sent a letter to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, inviting him to accept Islam now that Communism appeared to be finished. Gorbachev politely declined the offer but Russia today looks like a Christian Eastern Orthodox version of the Iranian Revolution.

The Russian war in Ukraine, which very much resembles Iran's war against neighboring Iraq that paralleled the revolution and lasted for most of the 1980s, has been billed as a holy war. Soldiers have been told that their sins would be forgiven if they are killed in combat. The godless Communism of the Cold War is long gone. Now it's "Holy Russia" against the West that has fallen into decadence and apostasy. Russia is widely perceived as having "lost" the Cold War. But the present confrontation with the West is a "do-over", and now Russia has got it right.

Just before Donald Trump captured the President of Venezuela, he conducted airstrikes on Nigeria. The airstrikes, with the consent of the Nigerian Government, were to protect Christians who were supposedly being attacked. This is like something, again, out of the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. 

Donald Trump's seizure of oil tankers is also a reflection of the Iran-Iraq War, when each country attacked tankers that was doing business with the other and Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. This prompted Ronald Reagan to send in the U.S. Navy and eventually resulted in the shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet, by mistake.

Then came the sudden and unexpected operation that captured the President of Venezuela. This was definitely a do-over of the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the U.S. hostages being held in Iran in 1980, known as Operation Eagle Claw. There is a close resemblance between the two operations, except that this time it was not necessary for the helicopters to refuel. It was the same Delta Force that primarily carried out the operation.

THE REVOLUTION SERIES 

The French Revolution, of 1789, was the beginning of the modern political era. The king and queen were overthrown, and guillotined, with the intention of creating a republic, where the people rule themselves and the president or prime minister is like a hired manager. But the revolution ended up in the rule of Napoleon, who was the prototype of the modern dictator although that was certainly not the intention. An example of the influence of Napoleon is that the French revolutionaries created the Metric System and his enthusiasm for it is why the world is using it today.

The French Revolution has swept the world. There have been two major, and numerous minor, reenactments of it. What I mean by major reenactments is where the basic direction of the revolution was changed. 

The first major reenactment was the October Revolution of 1917. The royal family of Russia was overthrown and executed, in favor of Communism. The original French Revolution was political, this changed the direction to economics. 

The second major reenactment was the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The original and first reenactment of the French Revolution had been away from religion. The Iranian Revolution turned the direction back toward religion, and not just Islam. Unlike the first two the royal family of Iran, the Shah, were overthrown but managed to escape.

One common factor in the reenactments is some reenactment of the Storming of the Bastille, which was the signature event of the French Revolution. The October Revolution had the Storming of the Winter Palace as it's signature event and the Iranian Revolution had the Storming of the U.S. Embassy. Donald Trump's Revolution had the Storming of the Capitol, on January 6th.

The French Revolution, and it's tremendous influence on the world, is described in detail in the book-length compound posting, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris", December 2015.

THE IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS 

During the Iranian Revolution the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran was attacked by revolutionaries, on November 4, 1979, and the staff taken hostage. This was the revolution's reenactment of the Storming of the Bastille and crisis would drag on for 444 days. Part of the issue was that the revolution was still going on in Iran and there was the lack of a clear authority for the U.S. Government to negotiate with. In April 1980, there would be an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the hostages, known as Operation Eagle Claw. 

What seems to have finally gotten the hostages released was that, in September 1980, the war began between Iran and neighboring Iraq. The new President  of Iraq was Saddam Hussein. He was certainly concerned about Iran's revolution spilling over into his own majority-Shiite population. With Iran convulsed by revolution, and cut off from it's former main ally the United States, Saddam is believed to have seen the opportunity to seize Iran's neighboring oil-rich and Arab-majority Khuzestan Province. 

With Iran actually being invaded, the hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point for the revolution. Those guarding the hostages were needed at the battlefront, and soon the hostages were released.

REVISITING THE HOSTAGE CRISIS

The former U.S. Embassy in Tehran is now a museum. The first of the following scenes show the "Glass Room" in the embassy where discussions could be held securely. The clear walls were so they could be sure they were not being bugged. These three images are from Google Street View.

A rescue mission was attempted on April 24, 1980, known as Operation Eagle Claw. It's failure likely cost Jimmy Carter reelection. A remote site in Iran was selected, and secretly surveyed. The site was code-named "Desert One". Helicopters were a necessary part of the mission, as well as planes. In the mostly mountainous country, Desert One was flat enough for the helicopters and planes to land, where the helicopters would be refueled from a fuel bladder. They would then move to a site closer to Tehran, where the hostages were being held, which was code-named "Desert Two". From there they would free the hostages the following night.

But several of the helicopters had developed mechanical issues before they reached Desert One. After a radio consultation with the president, it was agreed to cancel the mission because there wasn't enough serviceable helicopters left. Desert One was near a road, and a bus load of unsuspecting Iranians appeared. The U.S. soldiers disabled the bus and took the passengers captive.

It was then that disaster struck. A sandstorm had started, and visibility was reduced almost to zero. While maneuvering the rotor of a helicopter struck a plane, resulting in a massive explosion that killed eight U.S. service members. The surviving personnel flew back to base. The bus passengers were taken with them, and later released. The Iranian revolutionaries didn't know about the rescue attempt until the next day. They naturally concluded that God was on their side and had foiled the rescue attempt.

At the site of Desert One, the Iranians have built a mosque and it is the site of religious pilgrimages.

The green bus is the one that happened across the rescue attempt and the Iranian passengers were temporarily held. I think what happened to this rescue mission is that the helicopters had been on ships at sea for months, ready for such a mission, and the salt air had corroded their components.

These images are from Google Earth and Street View.

The remaining aircraft and bus are visible on Google Earth.

If the mission had continued, the team in trucks would free the hostages at the U.S. Embassy, indicated by the red dot at lower left in the following image. They would be taken to a nearby sports field, indicated by the white dot in upper right, where the helicopters would land. An airfield outside Tehran would be temporarily taken over. Both the planes and helicopters would land and the hostages would transfer from the helicopters to the planes, and be flown to safety.

The quick capture of the President of Venezuela, with apparently no U.S. casualties, was definitely a do-over of the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the hostages. It is like a parallel universe, but where events turn out differently. But this is the universe of Donald Trump and the operation was a brilliant success.

What is interesting is that Saddam Hussein, of Iraq, later became an enemy of the U.S. by invading Kuwait. Hugo Chavez, the previous Venezuelan President, was a friend of Saddam Hussein and visited him in Baghdad. When Chavez was dying of cancer, he anointed Nicolas Maduro as his successor and this was the president that was captured by Donald Trump. What I find striking is how much Nicolas Maduro looks like Saddam Hussein. With Saddam, the issue was the fabled "weapons of mass destruction". With Nicolas Maduro, the issue was boats supposedly carrying illegal drugs. But this is how reenactments of historical events work, the parts sometimes get rearranged.

What if Donald Trump had been president during the Hostage Crisis?

Does anyone remember when there were prayers across America? The Iran Hostage Crisis was not about military strength, it was a hostage situation. There were prayer meetings for them across America. After the rescue attempt failed the prayers continued, and all was not lost.

As it turned out, help would come from an unexpected direction. Neighboring Iraq at first expressed support for the Iranian Revolution. But then Ayatollah Khomeini, the main opponent of the Shah who had spent years in exile in Iraq teaching Shiite students in Najaf, made it clear that he wanted new Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein overthrown by Iraq's majority Shiite population.

Border clashes took place between the two nations, with each side blaming the other. In September 1980, it turned into full-scale war. With Iran actually being invaded, the hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point for the revolution. Those who were guarding the hostages were needed at the battlefront, and the hostages were soon released.

THE HOUSE OF THE REVOLUTION

Most major news agencies report that the house where Ayatollah Khomeini stayed for over three months, near Paris, just prior to returning in triumph to Iran, on February 1, 1979, has been demolished. I can see only one news report, by Reuters, that the house is still there.

Khomeini, an opponent of the Shah of Iran, was exiled in 1964 to Turkey. He later moved to the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Najaf, where he taught and wrote. These four images, from Google Street View, show the house where Khomeini lived in exile in Iraq. It is near the Shrine of Imam Ali, in Najaf. There are pictures of Khomeini on the walls.

In late 1978, as Khomeini became more popular back home, the Shah put pressure on Iraq and supportive Iranian exiles rented a house for him in Neauphle le Chateau, a village that is almost close enough to Paris to be considered a suburb.

It was during the more than three months that he spent there that the budding revolution really took form. Khomeini directed the revolution back in Iran by telephone and his sermons were distributed extensively on cassette tapes. The son of the Shah, who Khomeini would succeed in driving into exile, is now promoting the protests in Iran in a very similar way, except by social media. It is like a mirror image of the original Iranian Revolution.

Press conferences, with the global media, took place on a regular basis in front of the house in France. This photo was taken in the autumn of 1978. Khomeini is in the center of the photo. The clean-shaven man immediately to Khomeini's left looks like Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, who would become Iranian Foreign Minister before being executed. In the background are two men, talking below the window shutters, the one on the left looks like Abolhassan Bani-Sadr.

Image from the Wikipedia article "Ruhollah Khomeini".

Maybe the French Government didn't want the house to become a shrine. It is listed as having been demolished but nothing can be found about when that took place.

The former site of the home is listed, but if we go there on Google Street View the surrounding scenery doesn't match that in the photo above.

The fact is that the house hasn't been demolished. It is now listed on Google Street View. It is the house that now has the blue fence and blue and white shutters.

 

Images from Google Street View