They had to change their plans. As Time magazine would later report, “the crush stalled the Ayatollah’s motorcade, so that he had to be lifted out of the crowds, over the heads of his adulators, by helicopter.”115
“This Is the First Day of God’s Government”
On February 14, 1979—just two weeks after the Ayatollah Khomeini had returned to Iran—150 or so Islamic Radicals stunned American officials by storming the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran and taking hostages. It was a tense and terrifying time for the nearly one thousand diplomats, Marines, and support staff who had already witnessed more than a year of massive demonstrations, riots, and violent anti-shah and anti-American protests.
Fortunately, the situation had a happy ending. Only a few hours after it began, the Radicals—under pressure from Khomeini loyalists—released their hostages and retreated from the embassy grounds. Breathing a sigh of relief, the staff referred to the incident as the “St. Valentine’s Day Open House.”
But events in Iran were clearly going from bad to worse, and the State Department recalled most of its diplomatic team, leaving fewer than seventy employees on site.
The Central Intelligence Agency, however, did not seem troubled. “Don’t worry about another embassy attack,” the chief of the Iran branch in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations in Langley, Virginia, calmly assured his team back in Tehran. “The Iranians have already done it once so they don’t have to prove anything. Besides, the only thing that could trigger an attack would be if the Shah was let into the States—and no one in this town is stupid enough to do that.”116
Actually, that wasn’t quite true.
Within days of the release of the hostages, Khomeini named a provisional prime minister to run the day-to-day affairs of state and moved quickly to authorize a national referendum that would change the very nature of the Iranian system of government from a constitutional monarchy to a nation governed by Sharia law. On March 30 and 31, millions of Iranians went to the polls, and then, on April 1, 1979, Khomeini officially announced that the referendum had passed overwhelmingly, with 97 percent of the vote. Iran was now the first true Islamic Republic in the history of the world.
“I declare to the whole world that never has the history of Iran witnessed such a referendum,” Khomeini noted that day from his home in Qom, “where the whole country rushed to the polls with ardor, enthusiasm, and love to cast their affirmative votes and bury the tyrannical regime forever in the garbage heap of history. . . . By casting a decisive vote in favor of the Islamic Republic, you have established a government of divine justice, a government in which all the segments of the population shall enjoy equal consideration, the light of divine justice shall shine uniformly on all, and the divine mercy of the Qur’an . . . shall embrace all, like life-giving rain. . . . Tyranny has been buried. . . . This day [is] the first day of God’s government.”117
The Fuse Is Lit
In January, the shah and his family had settled briefly in Morocco after fleeing into exile, but that did not last long. By March, King Hassan was growing increasingly worried that Islamic Radicals might use the shah’s presence as an excuse to launch violent attacks inside his kingdom or even attempt to overthrow his regime. He asked the shah to leave.
Without much choice, the Pahlavis flew to the Bahamas, then to Mexico. By October, however, the shah had been diagnosed with malignant lymphoma. His body was beginning to shut down, and his doctors worried that without better treatment he might not live more than eighteen months. On October 22, President Carter agreed to allow the shah and his wife entry into the U.S. for medical treatment. The next day, they arrived. But neither the president nor his top aides fully appreciated the fuse they were lighting or the firestorm that was coming.
Khomeini had just called on “all grade-school, university, and theological students to increase their attacks against America.”118 A second embassy takeover plot was already in advanced planning stages by a group of university students eager to play their part in the Revolution, and now the students’ leaders felt they had two critical elements for success. First, they had a blessing from their Supreme Leader to strike the “Great Satan,” indirect though that blessing was since Khomeini at that point was not even aware of their plans. Second, they had a perfect pretext to strike since Iranians throughout the country were deeply outraged by Carter’s decision to show hospitality to a man they felt was a traitor to Islam and thus worthy of death.
On November 1, more than two million Iranians demonstrated at Tehran University, not far from the embassy grounds, shouting, “Death to America! Death to America!” What more incentive did they need, the plot leaders surmised, than the fact that the Imam and his people were with them?
That same day, U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski met secretly with Iranian prime minister Mehdi Bazargan. His deputy, Robert Gates—who would later become the director of central intelligence under President Bush 41 and the secretary of defense under President Bush 43—was in the meeting.
“Brzezinski flew to Algiers to represent the United States at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Algerian revolution,” Gates later recalled. “I accompanied him. It was an extraordinary experience. A highlight of the celebrations was a reception for the foreign guests and a lavish banquet. The reception was an intelligence officer’s dream come true. All the principal thugs in the world were present—Assad of Syria, Qaddafi of Libya, Yasir Arafat of the PLO, General Giap of Vietnam, Admiral Gorshkov of the Soviet Navy—and a remarkable collection of lesser-known terrorists, guerrilla leaders, and representatives of various liberation movements.”
When Brzezinski received word that the Iranian delegation wanted to meet with him, he agreed, taking Gates along to the meeting as a note-taker. Recalled Gates, “Our hosts were Prime Minister Bazargan, a wizened little guy with wisps of white hair floating around his head; Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi; and Defense Minister Mustafa Ali Chamran. Their greeting and the tone of the entire meeting were surprisingly friendly under the circumstances.”119
What happened next is astounding. In a stunning display of the Carter administration’s complete lack of understanding of the forces they were dealing with, Brzezinski told Iran’s new prime minister that the U.S. government was ready to find a way to work together and actually offered to sell the Radicals new weapons systems. “[Brzezinski] assured them of American acceptance of their revolution,” Gates observed, “discussed the reality of a common foe in their Soviet neighbor to the north, the need to cooperate on security matters relating to the Soviets, and left open the possibility of resuming military sales.”
Brzezinski confirmed all this in his own memoirs, noting that he specifically promised not to try to overthrow Khomeini’s regime but rather to work closely with the ayatollah and his team. “I made the point that the United States was not engaged in, nor would it encourage, conspiracies against the new Iranian regime,” he wrote. He further recalled that he said specifically to Bazargan, “We are prepared for any relationship you want. . . . The American government is prepared to expand security, economic, political, and intelligence relationships at your pace.”120
Bazargan apparently did not laugh, but he might as well have. To say he was not impressed with the “Great Satan’s” offer would be putting it mildly. The prime minister insisted the U.S. hand over the shah for trial in Iran. Brzezinski said no. There were many ways the two governments could cooperate, he replied, but “to return the Shah to you would be incompatible with our national honor.”121
News of the secret meeting leaked the next day. Back in Iran, anti-American sentiment—already red-hot—erupted. Iranians were enraged by the notion that their prime minister was even in the same room with, much less talking to, a top White House official.
Incredibly, however, few in Washington sensed imminent danger. On Saturday, November 3, President Carter went fishing up at Camp David, apparently oblivious to the enormous damage that was about to be done to America’s “national
honor.”122
The Explosion
Dawn had not yet broken in Washington.
It was Sunday morning, November 4, when an urgent “Flash Traffic” message from Embassy Tehran arrived in the State Department’s top secret communications center: “Demonstrators have entered embassy compound and have entered the building.”123
More than three thousand Radicals, most of them students, had climbed over the embassy’s walls, penetrated the compound’s internal security fences and doors, disarmed the Marines (who had been ordered by their superiors not to shoot), and were holding sixty-six Americans hostage while rifling through whatever files they could get their hands on.124
Staffers in the White House Situation Room immediately awoke the president at Camp David with a phone call at 4:30 a.m. The president spoke with Brzezinski, just back from Algiers, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Both were concerned, to be sure, but neither was overly worried, believing the situation would be corrected quickly, as it had been on Valentine’s Day. The president, therefore, went back to sleep. It was the last half-decent sleep Carter would get until after he left office on January 20, 1981.
U.S. intelligence officials soon had a translated copy of the students’ first communiqué, which blasted “the world-devouring America” and stated, “We Muslim students, followers of the Imam Khomeini, have occupied the espionage embassy of America in protest against the ploys of the imperialists and the Zionists. We announce our protest to the world; a protest against America for granting asylum and employing the criminal shah while it has its hands in the blood of tens of thousands of women and men in this country.”125
Top officials at the CIA and State all expected Khomeini to order the students to free the Americans and their compound in short order. It never happened.
To the contrary, the ayatollah quickly issued a statement praising the students. He then appointed his son, Ahmad, to serve as the liaison with the students holding the embassy.
Ahmad would later write that his father expected “thunder and lightning” from Washington, a quick and fierce military operation that would both rescue the embassy staffers and punish the new regime. But weeks turned into months without such a response. Instead, in Ahmad’s view, the Carter White House churned out feckless, limp-wristed statements and showed no serious interest in a military confrontation. President Carter’s envoy to the United Nations, Ambassador Andrew Young, publicly implored the ayatollah to show “magnanimity and compassion.”
Khomeini smelled weakness. He mocked the Carter administration as acting “like a headless chicken,” and exploited Carter’s indecision to the fullest.126
Humiliation
For well over a year, fifty-two American citizens were subjected to torture, interrogation, and all manner of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Islamic Radicals.
Some of the hostages were blindfolded and paraded before the Iranian media in pictures that would be flashed around the world. Others were repeatedly kicked and beaten. Some had guns put to their heads while students threatened to blow their brains out if they did not open safes or answer questions. At other times, the students played Russian roulette with them. At one point, a group of students forced a diplomat to the floor. One pulled out a knife, positioned it mere centimeters from the diplomat’s face, and threatened to cut out his eyes, one by one, if he refused to divulge classified information. And all the while, the Ayatollah Khomeini gave his full approval to such activities, and his son oversaw the terrorists’ day-to-day operations.
Back home, Americans felt a growing sense of humiliation and outrage as they saw the crisis in Iran play out on the evening news night after night with seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel. Most people did not understand the motivation of the Radicals who had seized the embassy or the ayatollah whom they apparently worshiped. Nor did they understand why President Carter looked so weak in the face of such a serious threat to U.S. national security. All they saw were millions of Iranians chanting, “Death to America! Death to Israel!” and violent, fanatical mobs burning the American flag and burning President Carter in effigy. As the crisis worsened, Carter’s approval rating plummeted to a mere 25 percent.
Muslims around the world—Sunnis and Shias alike—were stunned by such a dramatic turn of events. Radicals were energized. Reformers were horrified.
Officials in Washington were stupefied. In less than a year, the White House, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency had missed the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the rise of Khomeini, the fall of the shah, and the takeover of the U.S.’s own embassy in a country central to its national security and sharing a 1,600-mile border with the Soviet Union.
Admiral Stansfield Turner, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Carter, would later admit in his memoirs, “We in the CIA served the president . . . badly with respect to our coverage of the Iranian scene. . . . We had not appreciated how shaky the Shah’s political foundation was; did not know the Shah was terminally ill; did not understand who Khomeini was and the support his movement had; did not have a clue as to who the hostage-takers were or what their objective was; and could not pinpoint within the embassy where the hostages were being held and under what conditions. . . . We were just plain asleep.”127
Chapter Five
Tragedy at Desert One
The inside story of Delta Force’s attempt to rescue the hostages
Delta Force had been in existence for only two years.
After watching Radicals throughout the Middle East and Europe hijack civilian jetliners, blow up buses and elementary schools, murder Israeli hostages at the Munich Olympic Games, and bomb U.S. military bases and other sensitive Western installations throughout the early 1970s, Colonel Charlie Beckwith, Delta’s legendary creator and longtime commander, had fashioned the Army’s new, elite, top secret counterterrorist unit after the highly successful British Special Air Services (SAS). Beckwith had long believed the American military—a leader in air supremacy and massive ground operations—was woefully unprepared for a new age of terrorism, and he had all but begged his superiors to give him a shot at creating an answer. But neither Beckwith nor any of his men had any idea how quickly they would be needed.
On the eve of the embassy takeover, Delta’s operators were undergoing their final evaluation by the Pentagon’s top brass to be declared operationally ready for duty. Jerry Boykin, a founding member of the force, described for me that fateful day.
“On the fourth of November, we had just finished our evaluation and were declared prepared by a group of evaluators. Some of the guys went out to celebrate. But having not slept for nearly seventy-two hours, I crashed in a deep and desperately needed sleep. Suddenly, someone was shaking me and saying, ‘Jerry, Jerry, can you hear me?’ I thought I was dreaming. When they finally woke me up, they told me the Embassy had been seized and Americans had been taken hostage.”128
Beckwith regathered his Delta operators and sent them to the Farm, a top secret CIA training facility, to rest up and await further instructions. Then he told Boykin to head to D.C. with him to start planning a possible rescue operation.
“It was my first ever visit to the Pentagon,” Boykin recalled. “And I must tell you there was just a sense of disbelief—disbelief that these Radicals would again seize hostages in an American embassy, which by international law is U.S. sovereign territory. And no one really understood at that point that we were seeing the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. No one really understood the nature of the threat that we were up against.”
On November 8, Beckwith and Boykin were taken into Room 2C840, a highly secure war planning room in the Pentagon, where they met Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, Joint Chiefs chairman David Jones, the rest of the service chiefs, and several intelligence specialists.
“What do we know? What kind of intel do we have?” Secretary Brown asked.
The answer: very little.
“Who, exactly, are the hostage-takers
, and what do they want?” Brown pressed.
Again, the intel was sketchy at best. It was clear Iranian students were involved and that they were loyal to Khomeini. But their demands were unclear, and no one in the Pentagon knew if they had outside help.
“Has the Iranian government made any public statements?” asked Chairman Jones.
Yet again, he was told there was little to go on.
On and on it went. There were far more questions than answers, and the questions were daunting, to say the least.
What kind of aircraft might they use to mount a rescue operation? Planes, helicopters, or both?
How many would be needed?
How would they refuel?
Where would they land?
How would they penetrate Iranian airspace undetected?
Would they need fighter jet escorts?
Once in the country, how would the Delta operators actually get to the embassy? The hostages were, after all, being held in the heart of Tehran, deep inside the center of the country, hours from Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, or an aircraft carrier operating in the Persian Gulf.
And Tehran wasn’t exactly a friendly city. Delta would be heading into a city of five million people, all of whom hated America and would love nothing more than to kill American military forces who were “invading” their capital.
Were all the hostages being held at the embassy, or were they being moved around the city?
How many guards were holding them?
What kind of arms did they use?
How often did they rotate the guards?
Each question generated dozens more. But there was one question that haunted the men in that room more than any other: what would they do tomorrow or next week or next month if the Iranians began executing the hostages one by one?
Inside the Revolution Page 9