When you least expect it, television gets smart.
Summer is supposed to be the silly season when we indulge in amusements denied us during the colder months. But on TV, summer is usually the doldrums, where third-rate network shows go to die.
But there is evidence that in at least a few corners it’s becoming the smart season.
Witness the new PBS series, “Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason” (9 p.m. Fridays, KRMA-Channel 6). Watching Salman Rushdie and other writers talk about religion, morality and the formation of civilization reminds you how infrequently intellectuals appear on TV for more than 20 seconds.
Another thoughtful offering that explores the deep intersection of religion, politics and national destiny pops up Monday and Tuesday in “Guests of the Ayatollah,” a four-hour, two-night documentary based on Mark Bowden’s new book of the same name (6 p.m., Discovery Times on cable).
The book explores the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and the subsequent taking of American hostages. The events plunged the U.S. into an international crisis that spanned the election and inauguration of a new president and the invasion of Iran by Iraq.
Talking to Delta Force
Bowden is a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who has emerged as one of our best writers of muscular nonfiction. His “Black Hawk Down” was a deeply researched, beautifully written book long before it became a feature film. “Killing Pablo,” his account of the death of drug lord Pablo Escobar, was similarly riveting.
A secret U.S. military mission to free the Iran hostages in April 1980 ended in disaster, with the death of eight U.S. servicemen.
“This project came out of those other two in that I met some of the older members of the Delta Force unit who had taken part in the (failed rescue) mission,” Bowden said in a telephone interview. “They indicated they and the other guys on the mission would be willing to talk about it.”
This was no small thing. The famously secretive Delta Force operators who were involved in both the “Black Hawk Down” incident and in the failed hostage rescue effort are a special operations force so clandestine that they officially don’t exist.
“So I saw it as a wonderful opportunity,” Bowden said, adding he was not “interested in writing just about the rescue mission. But the more I thought about it in the context of the larger story, it really was one of the watershed events in modern history.”
That larger story involves the first time the U.S. found itself face-to-face with radical Islam. He started on the book early in 2001, but the attacks of 9/11 made his task seem even more relevant.
Americans followed the drama in Tehran closely. ABC’s “Nightline” program with Ted Koppel was created to offer daily “America Held Hostage” updates. But even for those who watched it unfold, there is plenty here to surprise:
The Iranian students who took over the embassy planned a 48-hour sit-in, but the internal politics of Iran transformed it into a face-off with the “Great Satan.”
The depiction of the embassy as a “den of spies” might have been true earlier, but after the Shah of Iran left the country, most of the spying operation, which was directed out of Iran toward the Soviet Union, left too.
Material selectively leaked from reconstructed CIA files by the captors who took over the embassy led to the deaths of some Iranians who had worked with the U.S., or, in some cases, had innocent contacts with embassy officials.
Most of the hostages survived their ordeal in good shape. “I think the healthiest ones were the ones who got home and went right back to work,” Bowden said. “The vast majority of them endured it, went on with their lives.”
Interviews with some of the hostage-takers are among the most riveting, albeit repellent, material.
“If I had to guess, most of the people involved (as hostage-takers) regret having been involved and look back on it as a mistake,” Bowden said. He also noted that those who agreed to speak on camera and are critical of Iran “are brave people. They exposed themselves to arrest and imprisonment.”
More symbolic than threatening
For all its resonance with what is happening in today’s clash between radical Islam and the West, the documentary is not perfect. There is considerable repetition both visually and in the way the story is told.
But it provides a thorough history lesson, and Bowden thinks there is plenty to learn from the experience. One lesson, somewhat surprisingly, is his conclusion that the takeover was symbolically important but not the story it was made out to be.
“The press tends by its very nature to exaggerate the importance” of events on which they focus,” he said. “This was 52 Americans being held hostage in Iran. A bad thing, but not a threat to our national security. … A bad deal but not a big deal.”
He sees that as one similarity between the takeover and the current standoff with Iran over nuclear materials. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology is a bad thing, he said, but “not a major threat to world order.”
He also thinks that the president of Iran, like the politicians in 1979, plays primarily to an internal audience.
“I think (Iranian president) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s primary audience is the Iranian people. This is a very unpopular regime and I think he and mullahs that run him are using these issues to prop up popular support.”
Staff writer Edward P. Smith can be reached at 303-820-1767 or at esmith@denverpost.com.
To learn more about the Iranian revolution and its aftermath
More than a quarter of a century has passed since the Tehran hostage crisis. In the interim, a number of books have been written about Iran’s revolution. Among the best:
“Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope,” by Shirin Ebadi, with Azadeh Moaveni (Random House, 256 pages, $24.95, 2006) The author, a human-rights activist and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, takes the reader through Iran’s recent history and how she chose to remain in her homeland after the revolution and fight for change.
“Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books,” by Azar Nafisi (Random House, 384 pages, $14.95, 2003) Nafisi’s account of life in Iran before and after the Islamic Revolution, with an account of the novels that the author, a teacher, and her students read over the years.
“In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran,” by Christopher de Bellaique (HarperCollins, 283 pages, $13.95, 2006) The author, a Western journalist and longtime Tehran resident, recounts what has happened to the hostage-takers, the mullahs who led them and what he describes as a dying revolution.
“Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter With Radical Islam,” by David Farber, (Princeton University Press, 224 pages, $22.95, 2004) The rise of the Iranian revolution and Islamic fundamentalism and our nation’s failure to anticipate either one.
“The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran,” by Robin Wright (Knopf, 384 pages, $14, 2001) Wright, who has covered Iran for 20 years, looks at the changes that have occurred in the second decade after the revolution.
