The Iranian Revolution and Operation Eagle Claw«

After the end of World War II, Iran had a king—known there as the Shah—who was a puppet of the West.
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But a short time later, in 1951, a guy named Mohammad Mossadegh became prime minister,
who had dignity and wanted his country’s mineral wealth to be exploited by the Iranians rather than by Western imperialists
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Listen, there are people out there
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That is how he nationalized Iran's oil industry
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The English and the Americans went to their deaths…
Do you know what it's like to milk a country's wealth-generating resources and then suddenly have that cut off?;
You look bad
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that way
The CIA and MI6, after bribing political, military, and religious leaders,
They staged a coup in Iran
and
General Fazlollah Zahidi arrested the prime minister, and absolute power was handed over to the shah,
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
who established a very harsh and authoritarian regime (with the backing of the British and Americans)
and
He sold them everything
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This took root in the Iranian collective consciousness, and thus Khomeini found fertile ground to launch the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and rally the people to his cause
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The people followed him not because they wanted a theocratic regime, but because they hated the West
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So, 6–7 months after the Islamic Revolution, and since the Shah couldn't find refuge anywhere,
The U.S. accepted him so he could be admitted to a hospital
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ε
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
They were considered devils, and they did that too, so the belief began to take hold that they wanted to restore the Shah.
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so
On November 4, 1979, a seemingly innocent demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran turned into an invasion and occupation
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Iranian students broke in and eventually took over the embassy, holding the American diplomats inside hostage
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At first, Khomeini told Iranian forces to disperse the protesters,
but that same evening he warmed up to the idea and ultimately supported the students in their occupation and hostage-taking
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Meanwhile, the Americans were up in arms, and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter ordered preparations for a military intervention
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His advisors jumped on him and explained that he was talking nonsense.
Something like that was impossible, and it would be better to try diplomacy
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So, on this day, November 19, 1979, Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 hostages
(five women and eight Black people)
as proof of «Islam’s respect for women and the oppressed»!
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Now there were 52 hostages
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Since Carter could see that the Iranians were blackmailing them,
(They were demanding the Shah's surrender, money, etc.)
ordered them to prepare a commando operation
where
American commandos will enter Iran, reach the embassy, and free the hostages
and
They will take them with them to the U.S.
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They named the operation «Eagle’s Claw,» and it called for planes to fly ahead into a desert in Iran,
after
helicopters to transport the commandos near the embassy
after
The commandos stormed the embassy to free the hostages
after
to bring them to the helicopters
after
to take them to the planes
and
for the planes to pick them up and take off
(I'm just saying this in broad terms)
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so that helicopters are lighter and have greater range and higher speed,
They removed the heavy filters from their engines
and protected them from the desert sand, and the operation began
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But
It was a venture where everything went wrong from the start
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AND
They stumbled upon an Iranian city bus by chance and were forced to take all the passengers hostage (until the operation was over)
AND
They came across a fuel tanker, which they were forced to blow up, killing the co-driver
AND
When the helicopters took off, they ran into a local sandstorm that American meteorologists had not predicted, and three helicopters
Sand got into their engines and they crashed
while
AND one of the helicopters collided with one of the airplanes
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All in all, the whole operation was a disaster, so they were forced to call it off and leave in a hurry.
taking with them the bodies of eight American soldiers
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Can you imagine Khomeini after all that???;
He had been in power for only a few months, and this incident cemented his position once and for all.
In fact, he even came out and said that Allah had sent the sand to punish them
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The U.S. was forced to go into the 1981 election with the hostages still in Iran.
Jimmy Carter was once again the Democratic Party's nominee
while
The Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan, who literally swept the election, winning 489 electoral votes.
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The Democrats had screwed things up yet again
and had paved the way for the Republicans

Author of the article:

Yannis Golias