When a group of militant Islamist students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, in late 1979 and took the Americans working there hostage, they had no idea that the ordeal would last for more than a year and that it would set the stage for the acrimony between the two countries that continues to this day.
They wanted America to send back the hated Shah, who had been knocked from the Peacock Throne the year before in the Islamist revolution headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and who had come to America. And they wanted America to stay out of Iran’s affairs.
The event knocked down the first domino in a series of events that quickly spiraled out of their control into an international incident that cemented the power of the mullahs in Iran and, to a large extent, to the derailing of an American presidency. It was a wild ride, one that shined a light on diplomatic impotency and had wide-ranging consequences on American policy toward the Middle East.
Just as he did with his account of the desperate battle that waged between American forces and Islamic fighters in Somalia in “Black Hawk Down,” Mark Bowden takes his readers inside the action – and inaction – inside the hostage crisis in “Guests of the Ayatollah.”
We learn how the hostages coped with captivity, each in his or her own way. Some fought their captors every step of the way, suffering beatings and other forms of mistreatment. Others acquiesced to a degree that they were looked at with scorn by fellow hostages. Most of them were somewhere in between, finding their own ways to deal with their loss of freedom.
Bowden also offers insights into the minds of some of the captors, many of whom he interviewed recently for this book. They, too, were of different mindsets. Some were strict dogmatic Islamist fundamentalists who never swayed from the party line and were often cruel to the hostages. Others were more lenient and, as time went on, established bonds with their prisoners. Some became national heroes and leaders in government, while others were excoriated or have fallen from view.
Public interest wanes
During the crisis, however, most of the captives were pie-in-the-sky hopefuls, naively reaching for a utopia they thought was surely on the way when the rest of the world took up their cause. They never understood why the rest of the world backed away from Iran and, while never really embracing the United States’ position in the crisis, certainly didn’t flock to the side of the students.
Back home in America, for the first few months of the crisis, the public was rapt. The hostage situation was all over the news, day in and day out. As the months wore on, though, events of the day began to overshadow the hostage crisis and public interest waned.
All this time, though, Bowden shows that there were behind-the-scenes negotiations taking place between members of President Carter’s staff and intermediaries for the Iranians. But just when it seemed that a deal was close, the Iranians would up the ante and the agreement would fizzle.
The impetus to end the crisis, oddly enough, came from Sadden Hussein. When he attacked Iran, starting a war that eventually would result in millions of casualties, the Iranians realized that they desperately needed spare parts for the jets that had been sold to them by America during the reign of the Shah. That finally forced the Iranians to bargain seriously and the hostages were released on Ronald Reagan’s first day as president.
Little chance to succeed
Bowden is perhaps at his best, though, in describing what turned out to be the ill-fated and ill-advised attempt by the brand new Delta Force to mount a military mission to free the hostages. This was the first mission for Delta, which had been formed the year before. According to Bowden, it had little chance to succeed and, after running into a sandstorm in the night in an Iranian desert, the mission ended in disaster when eight soldiers were killed in a collision.
Even though the mission failed, it showed that such a mobile fighting force was the way to fight in the future.
As Bowden puts it: “…the hostage crisis, an assault on diplomacy, itself ultimately depended on diplomacy for resolution. A quarter-century later, Iran’s stature in the world community remains diminished, and will remain so until the act itself is renounced … Holding America’s emissaries hostage was a crime not just against those held captive and their country but against the entire civilized world.”
Books editor Tom Walker can be reached at 303-820-1624 or twalker@denverpost.com.
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Guests Of
The Ayatollah
The First Battle
in America’s War With Militant Islam
By Mark Bowden
Atlantic Monthly Press, 680 pages, $26
