- Joined
- Feb 24, 2014
- Messages
- 33,597
- Reaction score
- 26,420
- Location
- Oceania
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian
When this happened I was a little tot so I wasnt sure what was going on, and just having seen this, and I sure learned a lot of new things.
- There was a previous hostage taking attempt almost one year prior, and it succeeded before the Iranian radicals left the compound.
- Most of the embassy staff and their dependents left not long after, but 50 or so stayed. Why didnt the State Department evacuate them all by this point?
- The spark that set off the second attempt was when Jimmy Carter allowed the exiled Shah into the US for cancer treatment, and this angered the radicals in Iran.
- When it happened a second time, and the students who engineered it only wanted to occupy the place for 2 days before leaving to demand the Shah's extradition.
- Khomeni originally didnt know about it, but when radicals gathered around the embassy, he decided to let it continue in order to get rid of the political opposition to his rule.
- The Iranians were willing to trade the 50 hostages for the Shah, but Carter refused.
- Operation Eagle Claw was a disaster because of poor planning and ineffective command and control.
What do you think?