November 4, 1979 - The Embassy Takeover in Tehran
By Gordonskene Thursday Nov 05, 2009 7:30pm
(On a scale of bad to worse - eleven)
Continuing our odyssey of November 4th, we arrive at 1979. This one went from bad to worse in a matter of hours. And stayed that way for a record 444 days. The U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran is largely thought to be responsible for bringing the Carter Presidency down and it did prove to be one series of epic blunders after the next, culminating in a disastrous rescue attempt that only served to aggravate an already out of control situation and further ramp up the chants of "death to America". But in the early hours of November 4, it only seemed like a diplomatic problem.
Richard C. Hottelet (CBSNews): “Young Iranians described as students, acting with the blessing of Ayatollah Khomeni have occupied the American Embassy in Tehran and hold more than fifty hostages there. They demand extradition of the Shah, who is now under medical treatment in New York.”
As the days wore on, there was no end in sight.
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If only Carter would have gift-wrapped the Shah and gave him to the Iranians. The world would be so different, it would look like science fiction.
god damned business in the 50s to begin with...
We've been screwing around in Iran for more than half a century, the Brits, even longer. It's no wonder they're 'not fond'
of us (US).
John Foster Dulles....and his brother Allen.
BP should have just negotiated with Mossedegh....
..that ever happened to America. I believe he was at the center of the JFK and RFK assassinations. Ironically he served on the Warren Commission.
When the words "all enemies foreign and domestic" were written, they were thinking of people like Allen Dulles.
bingo
bush/ cia hadn't sabotaged things to get reagan elected. and was ollie nnrth really lurking around when those helicopters took off for that rescue?
the CIA didn't mess around in the internal affairs of other countries and install the Shah in power in what they called operation ajax. The CIA needs to be disbanded. They have done more harm than good to this country.
Enemies are good - they justify continued profits for the congressional military industrial complex. Remember the Peace Dividend? Declining military budgets are not good for profits, thus Gulf War 1.
April Glaspie, United States Ambassador to Iraq, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, on July 25, 1990:
"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."
One week later, on August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait.
..was the extreme reaction of some of my "liberal" acquaintances back home.
Folks I would have comfortably assumed might counsel patience or an even appreciation of the greater ramifications of this action were calling for massive military intervention.
But you have GOT TO SEE John Stewart's imitation of Glenn Beck currently on TDS. Absolutely hilarious!
I second that. Brilliant stuff.
I remember hundreds of Iranian student protesters in downtown Minneapolis for two+ years before and up to this. By the time it happened, I was already with them in spirit...I read their pamphlets, they had a legitimate beef with the US Governments foreign policy there.
I'm even thinking it was more like 1975 when I first saw them
They're gone now. We got "Holidazzle" coming up in their place.
at Vocational High in '75, that musta been when I saw them.
Add: Duh, I just remembered I went to post-high there later too, so it could have been '79, that would make more sense.
I remember when I was a kid riding the Grand-Central bus downtown headed to Daytons and see Santa, then we would either go to the Forum, di Napoli's or the Nankin to eat.
The Michelle Bachmann freakshow.
http://jed-lewison.dailykos.com/
Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Hope-Military-I...
Because of this book, I wasn't especially surprised by 9/11.
wrote 'Blowback' before 911.
He is also interviewed in this movie....
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
the Reagan / Bush connection to this mess?
It's not like it's a secret or anything, just one of those things that Americans choose not to talk about.
might grow up and hate us for our freedoms too....
Have you heard how before the 1968 election, Nixon's people talked with the Viet Cong to get them not to sign a peace agreement with Johnson?
The more than twenty years of suffering by Iranians at the hands of the dreaded Savak and the Shah's brutal tyranny resulted from the CIA's violent overthrow of Iran's highly popular democratic leader.
That '53 coup was preceded by the (deposed) Shah coming to the US. It is my understanding that many Iranians believed history was ready to repeat itself when the Shah again came to the US. They feared another coup was in the works. Many think the hostages were taken in hopes of preventing a repeat. What say you?
Peace,
JK
That's when we thought we were all going to go to war, and were setting appointments with the JAG's office to draw up our wills.
When we didn't go to war we partied for a weak, but between hits on the weed we were also saying some variation of, "I can't believe we're letting the ragheads get away with it."
I never quite understood the term, since in every picture I ever saw, they didn't wear turbans, at least not their college student aged.
are aghast at the possibility of Iran becoming a 'nook-yoo-ler' power? I
Just as in the Cheney secret Energy Committee had maps of Iraq showing all the foreign oil drilling sites, I'd wager that somebody in the Pentagon is looking at a similar map of Iran, and for the same reason. It has nothing to do with national security, but profit security. And people who could have been our friends now hate our guts...on a planet where we're outnumbered hundreds of millions to one.
Given the West's past history in mucking about in their country, courtesy of 'The Great Game', is it any wonder why it almost certainly has crossed the minds of the Iranian leadership to use the byproducts of fission reactors (primarily being built for the day when the oil runs out) to make something to defend themselves against proven American and British perfidy? Frankly, I can't blame them...and I, too, am an American Army vet, of the 1980's era.
Jeez, can't we ever learn?
I don't think Iran is at the point of hedging their bets with nuclear power for their own consumption, or necessarily for bombs.
I think they're trying to free up their oil, so they don't have to rely on it, but can sell it on the market.
They already have a profitable relationship with Russia, and much of the former Warsaw Pact states.
And as for the bomb, I could well imagine they want to join the nuclear club, because the West (US in particular) has a way of threatening other states until they have the bomb, then we seek to become their friends, and even set up cultural, techonological and economic pacts with them, usually insuring the regime in power that we formerly opposed in the process.
Don't forget that we deposed their democratically elected parliament and prime minister in 1953 when they nationalized oil. Or that we have them surrounded: Iraq to the west, Afghanistan to the east, multiple military bases in Oman and Bahrain to the south, Turkey to the northwest, and Kuwait to the southwest.
There is plenty of aggression on our part pushing Iran into a defensive posture that we use to provoke conflict with the intention of destabilizing the country to gain access to its oil. Just like in 1953.
If I was Iran, I'd want nukes. They are the only deterrent. The cold war proved it, and so does North Korea. Which also proves our duplicity. We could give a crap about the DPRK and their nuclear program. It's useful to justify selling "defensive" missile systems in Asia. But if the DPRK had any oil ...
All those hostages came home alive.
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