Unhappy anniversary to Operation Eagle Claw
[NOTE: Yesterday and today represent the 30th anniversary of the Carter administration’s ill-fated Iranian hostage rescue attempt. Four years ago I wrote the following post about it. It feels appropriate for a variety of reasons—and not just the anniversary—to revisit the story now.]
This piece from the Atlantic Monthly Online, “The Desert One Debacle,” about the Carter administration’s attempt to rescue the embassy hostages in Iran in 1980, is a sobering read.
I vaguely remember the incident—just one in a long line of frustrations connected with that sorry spectacle. But the details–which I’d never read before—are a case of “whatever could go wrong, did go wrong;” from vicious sandstorms, to the utterly improbable coincidence of the planes’ initially encountering a truck and a civilian passenger bus as they landed in the desert, to a fatal airplane crash. Debacle, indeed; the planes never even came near Tehran.
Perhaps it’s a good thing they didn’t. From the evidence in the piece, the loss of life would likely have been even greater had they done so. It’s very difficult to believe that this mission ever had any chance of succeeding. Not only was the weather problem in the desert underestimated, and the assault force relatively small (one hundred thirty two men maximum, with some planes expected to encounter technical difficulties and drop out), but here was the game plan for controlling crowds around the embassy:
Another presidential directive concerned the use of nonlethal riot-control agents. Given that the shah’s occasionally violent riot control during the revolution was now Exhibit A in Iran’s human-rights case against the former regime and America, Carter wanted to avoid killing Iranians, so he had insisted that if a hostile crowd formed during the raid, Delta should attempt to control it without shooting people. Burruss considered this ridiculous. He and his men were going to assault a guarded compound in the middle of a city of more than 5 million people, most of them presumed to be aggressively hostile. It was unbelievably risky; everyone on the mission knew there was a very good chance they would not get home alive. Wade Ishmoto, a Delta captain who worked with the unit’s intelligence division, had joked, “The only difference between this and the Alamo is that Davy Crockett didn’t have to fight his way in.”
At any rate, it didn’t come to that. After flying through vicious sandstorms, landing in the desert, and encountering a Mercedes passenger bus filled with ordinary Iranians (who were promptly searched by the Americans and prepared to be flown out of Iran for the duration of the mission), the rescue attempt was aborted because too many aircraft had been rendered inoperative.
Then, as the evacuation of the planes was underway, one of the helicopters crashed into a transport plane on the ground, causing a conflagration and the death of eight members of the assault force. From the description of the scene, it’s a wonder the death toll wasn’t higher.
Reading about the hostage crisis brings back gut-wrenchingly bad memories: the endless negotiating, the arrogant posturing of the hostage-takers, the seeming impotence of our government. It’s easy to recall that it was long; at the time, it seemed nearly endless, but the actual length was astounding: 444 days. The incident was one of the reasons Carter lost the Presidency (and rightly so), suffering the final ignominy of the hostages’ release on Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration Day.
In retrospect—and perhaps even at the time—the entire hostage crisis was a debacle, not just the rescue attempt. The consensus is that Carter’s mishandling of the situation caused the US to be perceived as weak and vulnerable.
This recent Salon article contains a telling vignette on the subject, from the Iran of 2004:
So it was that I stood impatiently before the window to check out while the [hotel] receptionist took his sweet time to retrieve my American passport from the cubby behind him. He held it for a long, strange moment before he slid it my way. Wistfully, he said: “How I wish I had a passport like that.” Off we were, talking about the election. The receptionist hoped President George W. Bush would defeat Sen. John Kerry. He hated the Democrats, he professed. It wasn’t my first encounter with this Iranian enthusiasm for the Republican Party, as unfathomable as it was widespread. Under the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, after all, the United States toppled Iran’s popular nationalist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953, consolidating power in the hands of the brutal and despised shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Under the Democratic President Bill Clinton, the United States finally apologized for engineering those events. I asked the receptionist to explain. “Jimmy Carter,” he replied with disgust. “He could have stopped this Islamic Revolution, and he didn’t.” When it comes to Iran, where revolutionaries identified Carter with every bad turn the United States had ever visited on their or any other third-world country, and where Americans would come to associate him with haplessness and defeat, somehow everything the president from Plains, Ga., did would always be wrong. His presidency, already a fragile vessel, shattered on the shoals of the Iranian hostage crisis — those 444 days at the end of his single term when the staff of the American embassy in Tehran was held captive by militant students. From then on, he would forever be linked in the American mind with the humiliation of seeing one’s countrymen blindfolded, helpless, surrounded by angry mobs of Shiites — believers in a religion most Americans only dimly apprehended, revolutionaries who hated the United States for having supported a regime most Americans were barely conscious existed. And now, 26 years later, this Iranian hotel worker in a single gesture renounced his country’s revolution and laid it at the feet of the very president whose likeness Iranian revolutionaries burned in effigy as they massed outside the seized embassy compound.
Two of my friends spent all 444 days in that building, yet even they have told me they believe Carter’s policies only prolonged a bad situation. When Kissinger was Secretary of State he had a message sent to all Foreign Service Officers saying US policy was the USG would not make concessions to terrorists. That is, if you’re taken hostage, don’t expect the USG to pay for your release. The policy sounds heartless, but ultimately it serves our national interest and the interest of all US FSOs because it recognizes in advance that we are not pawns in a bargaining game. Carter turned my colleagues into pawns and he paid the price for it. So did they. Right now we see Obama essentially turning the entire nation into pawns for a negotiating strategy even he doesn’t recognize the end game of. As a chess player Obama is a failure and our nation and citizens are the pawns. F
If you contrast this with another famous hostage rescue operation in Uganda, you will get a grim opinion about level of professionalism of US military compared to Israeli.
It would not be over the top to say that Carter greatly emboldened Islamists, directly leading to their global power today.
No Sergey, the problems crop up when politicians try to run military operations.
Coincidentally, a week before the hostage takeover, an Iranian technician flew down from Houston with a motherboard he installed for our computer in Argentina. He had a short conversation with an Argentine who wondered about the wisdom of installing a theocracy. The Iranian’s reply was, “If that is what the Iranian people choose, so be it.”
I never saw him again. While he disliked the Shah, I doubt he was a supporter of the Mullahs. I doubt he ever returned to Iran.
F, the no negotiation doesn’t really work. The Soviets had a better policy. No ransom for their people and they could be killed before the guys sent to kill their captures complete their primary mission. Funny, a few Soviet diplomats were taken but few and with no repeat offenders.
Obama is on the same path. It wasn’t much commented on but on April 13, Obama issued an Executive Order making it a crime to ransom US mariners taken by Somali pirates. Sure it freezes assets as well but it comes at a time when the Navy is admitting they can’t secure the whole Gulf of Aden
Here’s the link to the Executive Order. I fat fingered the link in my original comment.
“the problems crop up when politicians try to run military operations”
But commission draw another conclusion:
“An investigation into Operation Eagle Claw cited lack of command and control and inter-service coordination as major reasons for the mission’s failure.”
I don’t think a comparison between Entebbe and Eagle Claw is fair, Sergey. Much, much different situations, including where the hostages were and the nature of likely opposition. And although every Yom Kippur I try to atone for not only voting for Carter twice but actually doing some caucus work for him in 1980, the desire to do something, anything, about this must have been well-nigh overwhelming.
I did notice that when Obama was busy apologizing to the Iranians for American misdeeds, both real and fancied, he didn’t bother mentioning that we might have an apology coming for Iran doing something that even the Axis didn’t, namely holding foreign and enemy diplomats hostage. I wonder if he even thought to do so.
It was not the first time when Persians overrun foreign embassy and murder diplomats. Russian poet Griboedov, who was Ambassador, was murdered by rioting mob in Tehran in early 19 century. This is a very unruly nation, richly deserving the most cruel despotism to keep them at bay.
JKB:
Notice I didn’t say “no negotiations.” That is not US policy. The policy is “no concessions.” Big difference: we’ll talk to you, but we will not meet your demands. I and all of my colleagues took a deep breath when we saw that message from Kissinger, but after a little discussion we all realized it was to our advantage. Kissinger’s statement was not much different from the Russian statement: don’t expect us to buy our dips back from you. I don’t know that it made a difference, but when Tupac Amaru took over the Japanese embassy in Lima in 1996, with 4-5 American FSOs in there, I announced to the international press (PAO there at the time) that we would not make concessions. Our dips were released on day 3. Other Latin dips were held. The Latins have a policy of paying ransom; the USG does not. Is that the reason this ended the way it did? I don’t know, but it certainly didn’t make matters worse for our guys. F
F:
It sounds like you are (were) with the US government, perhaps the State Department, at the time.
I say again: This is one of the things I love about blogs. We ordinary citizens never know who we’re rubbing shoulders with in the comments section. Sometimes they’re people who are actually involved in events, rather than just reading about them.
I agree with the “no concessions” policy, by the way.
Desert One was pretty much the final nudge I needed to come over from The Dark Side. My various Carter muggings by reality added up to a pistol whipping by reality with that incompetent disaster.
I always–and still do–believed that we should have given Khomeini a blunt ‘Read my f**king lips’ 5-day ultimatum: Release all our personnel unscathed OR we will turn your oil fields to obsidian parking lots. Further, tell them that we would demonstrate our seriousness at 5:00pm the next day. Subsequently(as necessary)turn a small Iranian Oil Location in to smooth, gooey glass.
But, did Jimmah listen..? NOOOOoooooooo..!
So, on into 30-years(and counting)of happy Evil Neoconservatism I moved. Baa-Daa-Bing. Like dat.
It is worth recalling an interview with an Iranian regime supporter relatively recently. He implied the hostage taking was a mistake because it led to the replacement of Carter by Reagan rather than the re-election of Carter. He added that they will not make that mistake a second time. Translation we want Obama re-elected therefore we will not create a crisis so that he obvious shortcomings will be revealed to even the most beguiled.
Also worth noting was GW Bush’s speech at the opening of his library. He mentioned one of the Iranian hostage takers is now part of an organization supporting his efforts to help political dissidents. Evil George Bush still fighting for freedom while Mr. Hope and Change is doing his best to undermine it, both here and aboard. wasts! (acronym for “we are so totally screwed”)
F: “Right now we see Obama essentially turning the entire nation into pawns for a negotiating strategy even he doesn’t recognize the end game of.”
Obama certainly doesn’t recognize the end game although he thinks he does. And as he strips America of its military and economic might, as he grovels before tyrants on the world stage, as he postures himself as a world leader but the world laughs at him, as he seeks to transform our Western nation into an Eastern one, as he bullys our friends and small democratic nations, as he creates a cult of personality with that arrogant uplifted stance, he is joined by a sizeable part of our military, CIA, FBI, diplomatic corp . . .
We’re not coming out of this unscathed; certainly if all that happens is an equivalent to the Carter era, we will be lucky. Could it be possible? Obama’s end game: America’s destruction?
I recommend Persopolis, both book and dvd for those interested in Iran from the personal viewpoint.
Also recall that when Carter came to visit the newly released hostages at that military hospital some slipped out the back to avoid meeting with him. A final commentary on an awful president who was heads and tails better than our current one.
Curtis, I think and fool vs. Knave argument is now leaning heavily towards knave, ergo America’s destruction does seem to be his endgame. No surprise really, he was always a believe, work, obey type from day one. (Believe, work, obey is a fascist motto if memory serves.)
CSM Eric Haney has some Eagle Claw info in his book on Delta Force. Yeah, everybody wanted to get into the act, with forseeable results in command and control.
I think the Grenada op finally convinced the Pentagon and Congress to force unified control. There was a law passed, name escapes me, but even the choice of helicopters was subject to interservice rivalries.
Lord have mercy, we’re going to have a short rifle company trying to hold off every Iranian soldier and party functionary the government in Teheran could find in Teheran to attack them in Teheran.
I was once on the short list for an op east of Amman. No air support, too far for the Navy’s carrier-based aircraft. (It was an accident. I just happened to be at Ft. Bragg when they wanted more guys. And it was cancelled.) I’ll have to get out a map and see wha the prospects were for tac air in downtown Teheran, especially the kind that doesn’t kill anybody.
If you want to think about Entebbe, remember the bad guys had the hostages in once place, at the end of an open runway. The Jews have all the luck.
Nobody’s done that since.
The Jews have all the luck.
Priceless, Richard.
Does anyone else remember Colonel Arthur D. “Bull” Simons, Ross Perot, and On Wings of Eagles?
This was a prime example of an ignominious clusterf..k, and from what I have read, the operational orders had so many decision points in them at which the whole operation could be abandoned, there was apparently such a restrictive set of ROEs, and the force was so undersized and under armed when measured against the objective, that it was pretty obvious that our side did not go into this operation wholeheartedly and with the determination to win no matter what.
The Soviets had a better policy.
A much better policy
This ain’t beanbag we’re playing, liberals. Your beloved late USSR showed the way.
I always—and still do—believed that we should have given Khomeini a blunt ‘Read my f**king lips’ 5-day ultimatum: Release all our personnel unscathed OR we will turn your oil fields to obsidian parking lots.
Not the oil fields; we need those too. We’ll pick a city — preferably one of religious significance to those partial to ovine wiles — and lend a hand to their urban renewal program. We could provide a list of cities that were under consideration (choosing a number and geographical dispersion great enough so as not to compromise our operational effectiveness) so that they could be evacuated, if desired. And if not, not.
Good news: Jimmy Carter is off the hook. He can die knowing he’s only the second worst President in American history. Bad news: we’re stuck with his bozo spiritual soulmate for another two and a half years, during which he can do untold damage.
P.S. I also note the reluctance with which the MSM deals with the assertion that pops up from time to time, that current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the major players among the student hostage takers. and actively tormented some of the hostages.
I also note the reluctance with which the MSM deals with the assertion that pops up from time to time, that current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the major players among the student hostage takers. and actively tormented some of the hostages.
It’s not reluctance. It’s respect, and admiration.
Nobody’s done that since.
Actually, Germany’s GSG-9 did so a little over a year later in Mogadishu, where Lufthansa Flight 181 had been hijacked by 4 Arab terrorists. Similar operation: all 86 hostages in one place, this time still on the airplane, in an isolated section of the airport. Both operations, while still difficult, were inherently easier than getting into and out of a hostile city of over 5 million people would have been.
I was a soldier at Ft. Bragg during that part of Jimmy’s administration, and my troops and I kept waiting to get the word to go. We weren’t clued in on the Eagle Claw operation, so it was all a big surprise, and even bigger disappointment, when we heard about it. While we initially gave Jimmy the benefit of the doubt for at least “trying something”, when word started to filter out about his mismanagement and fecklessness, that turned into utter contempt. 1976 was the first and last time I voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Thank you, Jimmy, for saving me from making the same mistake my parents made their entire voting lives.
We knew the military side had shown some major weaknesses as well, but we were confident those would be addressed (they were, eventually. Goldwater-Nichols provided for the unified command necessary during missions like these, and also created Special Operations Command, SOCOM, so the SpecOps community would have its own budget and its people could train together). The military took the fiasco at Desert One as an opportunity to improve. The politicians on the left simply took it as another chance to bash the military.
Just to clarify, I was at Ft. Bragg during the Iranian hostage situation, not during the Mogadishu operation. I was a newly-minted second lieutenant waiting for my officer’s basic course to start when GSG-9 raided the aircraft.
Rickl:
I second your comment @1:59.
What a thread!
Rickl: Foreign Service Officer from 1968 to 1997. Went back to State for some contract work after that for several years. But I put my pants on one leg at a time too. F
E.M. Crotchet,
This is a bit off the main subject, but I remember Bull Simons and On Wings of Eagles quite well. Many people don’t realize this, but before Ross Perot went bonkers over the supposed sabotage of his daughter’s wedding and blew the 1992 election, he had earned the deep respect of many Texans because of his actions to save, quite literally, his employees during the Iranian Revolution, and because of his later contributions to increasing the quality of the Texas education system.
I voted for him in 1992 because of these very things. Lessons learned.
Crotchet:
Here’s one I bet a lot of people have forgotten: Thanksgiving of 1968 or 1969 H. Ross Perot flew a chartered 707 (I think it was) full of frozen turkeys to Vientiane, Laos, and tried to get permission from the North Vietnamese to carry them on to Hanoi to be given to US troops in POW camps. (I was a very junior officer in Vientiane at the time.) I think Perot thought he could embarrass the NVN into allowing the turkey dinners get to the POWs, or shame them if he was refused. After 4-5 days on the tarmac (paying for ground power units to keep things chilled in the plane) he gave up and flew them someplace else. I thought it was a great PR gesture and potentially a damn decent thing to do for the POWs. The NVN trumped him by just ignoring him. Later in that tour I spent the afternoon as escort officer of the very first 3 POWs to be released by the NVN. Their stories were pretty horrible. F
waltj.
I was at Ft. Bragg in 1970 for Hearts&Minds and lahguage training. The alert brigade of the 82d had no second lieutenant platoon leaders, their gold bar guys getting chewed up in Viet Nam. So, when the Jordan alert happened, enterprising company commanders sent their 2lt XOs (!) out to round up any buddies they have in town for one or another school. “Hey, guys. You want a combat jump?” The alternative was to land like gentlemen after the airhead had been established and be parceled out as replacements.
Yeah, we wanted to jump.
Young guys. As we say–in polite company–all thyroid, no judgment.
But the op was cancelled because the terrs had the hostages spread out.
The Syrians had lent the terrs five hundred tanks, which probably meant a reinforced armored division. The airborne company AT weapon was the 106mm RR mounted on the Mechanical Mule, a large, motorized coffee table. You could roll that puppy going over a cigarette butt. And you sighted it with tracers.
But, fond memories notwithstanding, I had forgotten about the German op. Yeah. Park a jeep on the runway and the whole thing changes.
Tatyana. Look up “irony”. Not to mention the IDF had the luck at Entebbe, and, not to be annoyed or anything, but they managed to overshadow the US’ bicentennial.
Welcome, F. We like having people with experience and insight comment here. It discourages the trolls.
Oblio,
I second your thought. Several years ago, a British home and garden mag had a last page feature in which they asked a person to describe his or her ideal guest list for a dinner party. Of course people like Churchill and Olivier were the types usually mentioned, but I would be delighted to spend an evening with the commenters and hostess here. And I bet Tom Wolfe wouldn’t write an article making fun of the attendees.
Richard, it is not often one sees the phrase, that’s all. Regardless specific context. Irony, indeed.
Tatyana.
You might have noted the context was Desert One vs. Entebbe.
How STUPID do terrorists have to be to set themselves up as they did at Entebbe?
Why can’t we have some of that luck?
Oh, the Arabs had outsourced the op to Germans. Might that explain it? Have to think about that.
It should be remembered, among all the more or less justified French bashing, that the Air France crew insisted on staying with the hostages when the non-Israelis were allowed to leave. Well done of them.
Ah yes, the days of President Carter. Carter – fiasco or disaster? You make the call!
Cappy.
You lack imagination: Debacle. Catastrophe. Clustercrunch. Chinese Fire Drill. Self-foot-shooting.
Richard, the “mules” were gone by the time I got in, but we did have “goats” — the Gamma Goat. In its own way, I’m sure its was as much a white elephant (to continue the animal analogy) as the mule was. Only it was a lot bigger, costlier, noisier, and notoriously unreliable. It had six wheels mounted on three evenly-spaced, articulated axles. It was supposed to go over rough terrain, but I never saw it negotiate anything that a 2 1/2 ton truck couldn’t do equally well. It was also supposed to swim. Yeah, right. I nearly floated one down a rain-swollen creek in Korea. Fortunately, the tires hit solid ground and the driver was able to drive it out of the water, saving me from the Report of Survey from Hell. Its diesel engine was also so loud that outside hearing protection was required while operating it. That’s right, not the little orange or yellow ear plugs that got us by on the range, but the full earmuff-style can’t-hear-squat protectors. What a piece of junk.
waltj
Did they put a 106 on it or had they gone to the TOW or Dragon?
Not gonna sneak up on anybody with that one, are ya?
I was a weapons platoon leader, and we had TOWs mounted on M-151A2s (the Jeep, for you civilians). Our rifle platoons had Dragons. The Goats were used to carry our three 81mm mortar tubes. Not mounted inside, you had to ground-mount the mortars. I was supposed to have three Goats, but one was redlined for the entire time I had the platoon (steering gearbox). In Mr. Carter’s Army, spare parts were hard to get. So I got by with two mortar carriers instead of the three I was authorized.
waltj.
Although the M152 accelerated, in first gear, like a sports car, it was really a small truck with the associated high center of gravity.
When we had the 106 on it for leg infantry, it would roll easily and there were regs about how slow you had to be going, around a CORNER ON A ROAD. I don’t recall how much the 106 weighed, but it was a lot and it was mounted at about the level of the driver’s shoulder. You can imagine what that did to the stability
And, as I keep saying, you sighted it with tracers.
It was okay on the M113.
You didn’t hump the 81s.
Huh.
The 106 and the 90 were just going out as I was coming in. I once saw a live-fire demonstration by a very well-trained (and well-rehearsed) 106 crew. From the time they pulled the jeep into position, fired the .50 caliber sighting rifle, made their adjustments, and had the recoilless round on the way was under 10 seconds.
Why would you even try to hump an 81? Soldiering is hard enough as it is without that sort of self-abuse. The tube, you could probably carry if it were fastened and balanced properly on your back, but we never carried the baseplate any farther than we had to. Plus the sights, aiming stakes, aiming circle, plotting board, etc. And that doesn’t even include the rounds. No, when we went somewhere, we drove. Had to. Since I was short a vehicle, two gun crews had to share one, while the third got a Gamma Goat to itself. The section sergeant was good about rotating which squads had to share vehicles. Ah, the good old days!
waltj.
My dad was a platoon leader in a weapons company in the ETO. There was only so far, especially in places like Holland and the Ruhr plain, where you could go without being subject to direct fire or observation from a great distance.
So they humped the 81s from wherever they had to leave their vehicles. Three pieces, plus the sight and the ammo.
Ditto the machine guns, including the water-cooled models.
The weapons platoon guys humped the 60mm, which I believe are no longer in the inventory except for the special ops guys.
I’m not sure who had the bazookas, which were irregularly supplied.
Some stuff on this issue over at Blackfive.
Includes something I hadn’t heard. A five-man team was dropped into the mountains to provide commo and nav, I think. One was killed when his chute didn’t open. After the remains of the team heard the thing was off, they heard that Carter refused a pickup op and they had to E&E to Afghanistan, which took a very long time.