638. Revolution in Iran: The Hostage Crisis (Part 3)

21:12Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, correct.

21:13Tom Holland:Very publicly.

21:15Dominic Sandbrook:Yes. But do you know what? Jimmy Carter now shows a perhaps slightly less Christian side to his character. when they meet in Washington he says um I think we should forget about the Shah let's cut him loose let him twist in the wind and Brzezinski who's the hard man he's really shocked by this and he says I think it would be repugnant to cancel our invitation it would violate our loyalty to our friend and Carter says very curtly I don't want the Shah playing tennis in the United States while Americans in Tehran are kidnapped or killed well it'd be very easy for Carter to stop um the Shah

21:50Tom Holland:playing tennis, wouldn't it? Because he doesn't put him on the booking list for the White House.

21:53Dominic Sandbrook:Right. Yeah. If there's anyone, it's funny. It's so revealing that Jimmy Carter reaches for that image. Right. So anyway, the Shah's now in a mess. Jimmy Carter doesn't want him. So where can he go? Now, remember, he has a house in our own beloved country. But the weather's terrible. But he said the weather was terrible. Now he gets that idea back. And Jim Callaghan, still prime minister says no you're not coming and then there's an election in britain and margaret thatcher big fan of the shah she also says no i mean she's the iron lady she's

22:29Tom Holland:not going to be swayed by obligations to a sick king is she well do you know what she actually

22:34Dominic Sandbrook:did she actually felt really bad about it but she was told you know security on the shah's estate which is just outside london will be a nightmare like we're not convinced it'll be very difficult to protect this country estate from attackers. But also, we will put our own Britain's embassy in Tehran at risk. And they're right.

22:55Tom Holland:Because actually, I mean, we know that American diplomats are going to be taken hostage. British diplomats are not. And in a sense, bearing in mind the notoriety of Britain in the Iranian demonology, I mean, that is a dog that doesn't bark in the night, isn't it?

23:08Dominic Sandbrook:It is. Although there are massive protests outside the British embassy, but it's not invaded.

23:12Tom Holland:And they changed the street name, don't they, from Winston Churchill Avenue to Bobby Sands Avenue. And Bobby Sands is an IRA hunger striker.

23:20Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly, they do. So the Shah can't go to Britain. He goes off to the Bahamas in the end and he gets a house on the beach and he spends his time praying and reading the newspapers. And he rings up foreign diplomats to reminisce about the good old days, about food from Maxims of Paris and Dom Perignon champagne and stuff. Great days. And then after that, he goes to Cernavaca in Mexico. And both of these bolt holes have been arranged by two American pals of his. So specifically, his great chum, Henry Kissinger, and Kissinger's mate, David Rockefeller of oil family fame, who is the president of the Chase Manhattan Bank.

23:58Dominic Sandbrook:So useful friends. Yeah, good contacts. And Kissinger and Rockefeller take it upon themselves to be the Shah's great champions. and they think it's terrible that the United States has abandoned him. And all through 1979, Kissinger and Rockefeller are pestering the Carter administration, allowing the Shah, you're letting America down. This is really poor. Come on. And does Carter respond to this in a tone of Christian obligation? Carter, Tabby, get your bleeping machine ready. Carter says, and I quote, F*** the Shah. I'm not going to welcome him when he has other places where he'll be safe. this is not what jimmy carter says when he's teaching a sunday school in plains georgia surely anyway the decisive factor is the shah's health so basically his doctors have been visiting him his french doctors and they can see that his cancer is spreading he's losing weight he looks terrible he's turned yellow with jaundice all of this and eventually david rockefeller sends his own medical team to mexico to inspect the shah and they go back to washington and they report to the administration.

25:00Dominic Sandbrook:And in October 1979, so the 19th of October, there's a meeting at the White House to discuss this. And Carter's aides say to him, I think you should let him in. He's dying, you should definitely let him in. Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, says, common decency and humanity demand that we allow the Shah to have treatment in New York. He was our ally. He was our man. We can't abandon him now. Carter's chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, a Georgian like Carter, he points out to the ticata he says if the shah dies in mexico henry kissinger will go around the world saying first you caused his downfall and now you've killed him that's a bit harsh it's the cancer that kills him surely yeah but that is what henry kissinger would have said yeah okay so you know hamilton jordan is right and carter eventually gives in but at the end of the meeting carter and we've painted carter as in some ways you know we've perhaps been a bit unfair to jimmy carter in some ways here jimmy carter shows his shrewdness because jimmy carter says at the end of the meeting does somebody have an answer as to what we would do if the diplomats in our embassy are taken hostage and there's a long silence nobody says anything and carter says i gather not on that day we will all sit here with long drawn white faces and we will realize that we have been had so if he's alert to that why doesn't he withdraw the diplomats before allowing the Shah in?

26:25Dominic Sandbrook:That's a good question. Where they don't want to withdraw their diplomats, they think it's so important to have diplomatic representation and keep talking to these fabled moderate elements, I think. If Carter ran away from Iran, he would be accused of completely losing Iran, I think. So he doesn't want to do that.

26:42Tom Holland:Yeah, yeah.

26:42Dominic Sandbrook:Embidious situation. Anyway, he doesn't handle it well, as we will see. So three days later, the 22nd of October, the Shah and Empress Farah arrive in New York, and they are rushed straight to the Cornell Medical center so that he can have emergency surgery. There's no attempt, really. Everyone knows they can't keep this a secret. So even as the doctors are operating on the Shah, there are crowds outside the building chanting against him. And are these Iranian? Iranian students. Iranian students. So there were tens of thousands of Iranian students at American universities. They tend to be anti-Shah.

27:17Dominic Sandbrook:And by this point, when they demonstrate against the Shah or whatever, they often get attacked by Americans or there's scuffles on campuses and things like this, and which will worsen, of course, once the Hoshtah's crisis begins. But there are also lots of pro-Shah Iranians in America. There are the exiles. So increasingly exile groups who've arrived since 1978, settled in places like Florida and California, still exile communities of Iranians in America today. So in Tehran, when the US embassy staff hear the Shahs arrived in New York, oh God, they're not happy. So Bruce Lengen, who is the acting ambassador, had already said to Washington, please do not do this.

27:56Dominic Sandbrook:Do not do this. And if you are going to do it, clear it with the Iranian provisional government beforehand. Explain to them what you're doing. Try to smooth the ground. Please send a new ambassador to show that you accept the new regime. And please do something to arrange proper security for Americans in Tehran. And as throughout this story, too many people in Washington just don't listen to the signals they're getting from their embassy. But in the first few days, Lengen thinks, you know what, we might just get away with this. There is no attack on the embassy. There are marches, but by Iranian standards, the streets feel reasonably calm.

28:34Dominic Sandbrook:So maybe things are going to be all right. What he doesn't know is that at Tehran's University of Technology, there are students who have been plotting for weeks to attack the embassy. Now, there are different groups of students who kind of claim credit for this. The name that comes up most often is a guy called Ibrahim Ashgazada, who later on actually ended up being a reformist Iranian politician and was actually arrested in the 2000s. Oh, so a moderate element. Moderate element, but not in 1979. He was an engineering student. He was absolutely typical of the students who were very excited about Khomeini's return, see it as a chance for a new start, banishing the corruption and the frustrations of the 70s.

29:13Dominic Sandbrook:And he meets up with some friends of his at a cafe in Tehran one day in the autumn. and they say, we would love to kind of demonstrate our, you know, it's classic student stuff. Let's make a stand, you know, let our voices be heard, all of this kind of thing. Strike at the imperialists. Strike at the imperialists. Why don't we break into the US embassy and from there proclaim our message to the world? Brilliant idea. They meet up with students from other Tehran colleges and they form this group with the catchy name, Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line. Love it. and their plan is they will occupy the embassy for a few hours, maybe a few days, and they will broadcast the message that you read out.

29:55Dominic Sandbrook:We don't like the Shah, we don't like America, we don't like imperialism, you know, huzzah, huzzah, end of story.

30:01Tom Holland:So it's a sit-in in exactly the way that sit-ins from 1968 onwards have operated in the West, and presumably inspired by them.

30:09Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, that's the funny thing, isn't it, about the Iranian Revolution, that in some ways, you know, it was often described in the West as backward looking, as medieval, all this kind of thing. And yet it's very modern. And it's informed both by, you know, sheer tradition and also by the Ayatollah's radical vision. But also there's hints of the 1960s and 1968 in there too.

30:32Tom Holland:Yeah. And that's what people on the left in the West who are enthusiastic initially for the Iranian revolution are picking up on. That's what they liked.

30:38Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. So now we come to the fateful day, Sunday the 4th of November 1979. It is exactly one year to go until the US presidential election. I mean, you could not make this up. So 365 days time, Jimmy Carter will face the American voters. And about dawn, 300 students gathered near the embassy. And at least one of the female students, they're wearing these black... Chadors. Yeah, chadors, black robes. and they have bolt cutters hidden under their chadors. And they've brought enough food for three days. That's as long as they think the occupation will plausibly last at the outside. They go through the streets towards the embassy.

31:20Dominic Sandbrook:Remember that Tehran, there are always street protests and stuff, so people don't think anything of it. And inside the embassy, nobody really has any idea what's happening. There's a brilliant book on this by an American writer called Mark Bowden called Guests of the Ayatollah, all about the siege and the hostage experience, which I heartily recommend to the listeners. And one of the people he talks about in this book is the press attache, who was Barry Rosen, who was a big sort of Iranophile. He'd been a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran. He spoke Farsi, all of this. He's in his office. It's nine o 'clock.

31:54Dominic Sandbrook:He's typing a report, and he hears shouting at the window. He goes to the window with his secretary. There's this huge crowd, men with a lot of stubble shouting, death to Jimmy Carter, death to America, women in their chadors, fists pumping, hurrah for the Ayatollah, all this kind of thing. Standard stuff. And he watches it for a little while. And then to his horror, he sees they're starting to climb the gates.

32:18Tom Holland:And I guess if you're an American diplomat in the 70s, seeing people climb over the walls of American embassies is not a good sign.

32:26Dominic Sandbrook:You're absolutely right. it is only four years since the fall of saigon you know that's the scar of south vietnam's fall has not healed by any means and those scenes that the u.s embassy must be i mean they are very fresh

32:40Tom Holland:in people's minds and there are no helicopters on hand there are no helicopters cut well as yet

32:46Dominic Sandbrook:rosan goes back in he says i bar the door you know i need to get rid of any sensitive papers but actually before he can do that men are already forcing their way into his office and he shouts at them in Farsi, get out or whatever. But more and more of them are coming in and one of them says to him, leave immediately or you will be hurt. We are in control. And Rosen can see they're very young. They're very disorganized. They are frightened, of course, and they're angry. They're in a terrible state. And he thinks, well, I'll just give in, you know, because this will be over soon. I know how these things work.

33:18Dominic Sandbrook:I'm just going to have to set this up for the time being. And he's led outside by these blokes and there are already hundreds of people pouring into the compound and they're moving around the buildings, they're going through all the cupboards, they're pulling out documents, all of this kind of thing. In the chancery building, students demand that the staff open the safes. The staff don't have the combination. Some of the students start hitting them and then they drag the staff outside, they bind them, they blindfold them and this happens in every building in the compound. It's a very confused and dramatic scene but it all happens pretty quickly.

33:55Dominic Sandbrook:An obvious question is why the Americans don't fight back. Why is there no shooting? And there are a couple of explanations. One is that not all the students are violent. So some of them carry signs in English that say, don't be afraid, we just want to sit in.

34:08Tom Holland:Right, so this is like Berkeley. This is like a student sit-in in California.

34:12Dominic Sandbrook:Right, exactly, or the London School of Economics, or the sit-ins that have been so familiar in the 60s and 70s. Secondly, an obvious point, the Marines are massively outnumbered. I think there are about just over a dozen Marines in the compound, There are 300 students. You're not going to shoot them all. So they're overwhelmed. But crucially, everybody thinks this will be over within hours because there have been attacks on the embassy before. It's scary and it's traumatic, but it's not going to last forever. So by lunchtime, it's all over. The compound is now full of hundreds of Iranians and about 60 Americans have been taken prisoner.

34:47Dominic Sandbrook:Most of them have been blindfolded or bound. some of them are really in a you know they've been hit they're bruised they're battered some of them are terrified they're going to be shot some of them are saying to their friends don't worry it's fine we'll probably be on a plane going home tomorrow this is how these things work the chief diplomat Bruce Lengen and two of his senior officials are not there they had a meeting at the Iranian foreign ministry they went to the foreign ministry Lengen found out what was going on and he said I want to see the foreign minister and they basically showed him into a dining room and he was there for hours and then he was there overnight and then he was there for another day

35:27Tom Holland:and then he basically realized I'm never getting out of this room and then does he get taken to the

35:32Dominic Sandbrook:back to the embassy no they get shut up in the foreign ministry forever forever well what happens

35:37Tom Holland:to them do they get out as well in the end well they're hostages they're hostages but stuck in the foreign ministry not even with their mates back in the embassy well as we will see the hostages

35:45Dominic Sandbrook:a lot of them end up getting split up. They're getting solitary confinement and so on and so forth. So they're all prisoners. They've ended up as prisoners of the Iranian revolution. Of the 72 embassy staff, only six of them avoided capture. And this is an extraordinary story.

36:02Tom Holland:Yeah, because this is the film, isn't it?

36:04Dominic Sandbrook:This is Argo. There were five of them, Mark and Cora Lyak, Joseph and Kathleen Stafford and Robert Anders, who were working in the consulate. The consulate building had a separate exit onto the street, so they were able to sneak out their original plan was to go to the british embassy but there was a massive crowd outside the british embassy so they had to abandon that and after various goings-on they end up being taken in by the canadians as well as the sixth guy called henry lee shatz and the story of how they're taken in by the canadians and then they get out of iran is the ben affleck film argo this extraordinary story just cut it a very long story short the Canadians who are the great heroes of this story teamed up with a CIA agent called Tony Mendez of course he was called Tony Mendez and he created full-sight entities for them they pretended they'd been working as Hollywood film scouts checking out locations for a science fiction film called Argo and the CIA went to the lengths of opening a Hollywood studio to make this film they made posters they ran ads in variety in the Hollywood Reporter to create a cover story for them and mendez in january 1980 flies into iran with his forgery kit to basically get these guys out it's such a good film yeah canadian caper it was called at the time an amazing story i mean the fact that i'm telling the story if you haven't seen the film you can probably guess whether they get out or not but it is still worth watching the film i mean i've got to say tehran is an excellent

37:35Tom Holland:place for thrillers there's also a tremendous israeli spy series called tehran oh yeah i remember you telling us about that yeah Mossad agent who goes undercover in Tehran um it's actually very kind of le carré both sides are morally ambivalent I really commend it and it's tense particularly the first two episodes is incredibly tense in exactly the way that Argo

37:57Dominic Sandbrook:is tense and tense Tom I would like to believe in the same way that this episode is tense no yeah absolutely because 66 hostages have now been left in captivity and Jimmy Carter now has a massive headache. So he's at Camp David, his sort of retreat. It's four o 'clock in the morning and he gets the call from the State Department that the embassy has been taken and people have been taken hostage. And he puts the phone down and he tries to get back to sleep, but he can't sleep for obvious reasons. He had specifically asked his advisors what they would do if this happened and they had not given him a clear answer.

38:33Dominic Sandbrook:And he must know, even at this stage, that if he can't find an answer, then he and his presidency are heading for the dustbin of history.

38:42Tom Holland:Not the dustbin of history.

38:44Dominic Sandbrook:Do you know what? It's a Ronald Reagan image. That's why I chose it.

38:48Tom Holland:Dominic, well, you said tension. Tension, we've got it. Come back after the break to find out if Jimmy Carter can get out of the bin. Dear McDonald's, your breakfast

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40:34Tom Holland:Hello and welcome back to The Rest is History. We left you with the United States Embassy in the hands of student militants and some 66 American hostages from that embassy being held hostage. So, Dominic, what happens to these hostages?

40:51Dominic Sandbrook:So at first, remember the hostages don't think they're going to end up as long-term hostages. They think they will be out within hours, maybe a day, worst case, two or three days. At first, they're held in the embassy compound. And they were held there for a very long time, for weeks and months, until the Iranians became worried that the Americans might try to rescue them, and they moved them to prisons. They split them up and moved them to prisons around Tehran. I mentioned Mark Bowden's book, Guests of the Ayatollah. This was an expression used by the Iranians. They said these people are the guests of our regime.

41:26Dominic Sandbrook:But they weren't treated like guests. They were blindfolded. They were regularly interrogated. They were bullied. They were beaten. People would put guns to their heads. They would pretend to play Russian roulette with them. They would threaten to shoot them unless they admitted that they were spies and handed over secrets.

41:44Tom Holland:I'm surprised they would use the word guests, actually, because hospitality is such a big deal in Islam.

41:50Dominic Sandbrook:It's a joke, isn't it? There's something mocking about the attitude of the Iranians during this crisis. But the rules of hospitality are so important. Well, I mean, this is not a great advert for Iranian hospitality. Not least because the hostage takers themselves, of course, they're young. They're in their early 20s. they themselves are frightened overexcited disorganized bad tempered they spend a lot of time screaming at each other and at the hostages some of the hostages the women and african americans were released before the end of november after a few weeks obviously because the captors wanted to make a political point this is the sort of 1968 side of the iranian revolution so that left 52 of them still in captivity.

42:36Dominic Sandbrook:And their story is a pretty grim one. I mean, a lot of them had a really, really terrible time. They were regularly beaten. They were regularly bound for days. They were brought out before jeering crowds. They were split up and put into solitary confinement and so on.

42:51Tom Holland:And they're always wearing blindfolds, aren't they? So all the photographs, they're always, I mean, just awful.

42:56Dominic Sandbrook:And when they were moved to prisons, they had a really, really tough time. and the prison guards, so who were not students, the prison guards, they beat them, they tortured them, all of this kind of thing. And of course, the greatest torment of all is just how long this goes on for. So huge spoiler alert now, these guys are going to be in captivity for 444 days. So far, far longer than they had envisaged, or indeed, the students had envisaged. I mean, this is the interesting thing. So the question is, why? This was never part of the student's plan. Why didn't they let them go?

43:36Tom Holland:And what about the Ayatollah's promise that, you know, just get on the phone to me and I'll sort it out?

43:40Dominic Sandbrook:Well, this is where we get to the nub of the story, the Ayatollah. So Khomeini, despite what was often said in, you know, particularly American newspapers in 1979 and 1980, Khomeini almost certainly knew nothing about their plan, or if he did know anything the vaguest possible intimations of it because we know that when his foreign minister went to him and said this is what has happened Khomeini was really surprised and he said and I quote who are these people why have they done this go and kick them out so that was his initial reaction sort of midday or so on the 4th of November but by that evening he already seems to have changed his mind and there are some suggestions this is because his son was in Tehran and his son went to the embassy and reported back.

44:26Dominic Sandbrook:He said, the students are massive fans of yours. They're doing this in your name and people love it. The reaction on the streets of Tehran is one of delirium, of joy, of ecstasy. Everybody thinks this is the most tremendous coup. And what is more, actually, within days, the embassy becomes a massive tourist attraction great crowds will go they're celebrating and cheering there are people selling tapes of uh khomeini's sermons are they kind of taking souvenirs yeah there are people selling souvenir hats and stuff i mean i i read this and i i did some googling enthusiastic googling i don't know what a souvenir u.s embassy seizure hat would look like a stetson no i don't well Well, would they be Stetsons?

45:13Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, who's making Stetsons in Tehran? Baseball caps. Maybe baseball caps.

45:17Tom Holland:I mean, are these hats that the... The Iranians are wearing. They're not hats that they've taken from the US embassy. No. How many hats could there have possibly been in the US embassy? I imagine it's obligatory for a US ambassador to have a Stetson.

45:29Dominic Sandbrook:Surely. But I mean, that's only one Stetson. They're selling loads of hats. Anyway, we've got sidetracked into this hat issue. Millinery. We're not the rest as millinery, Tom. So to go back to Khomeini. this is a good example i think of his political skill his underrated political skill because he sees this is the perfect symbolic issue to maintain his hold on the streets because the longer he can spin all this out the better for him it makes the sort of so-called moderates in his interim government look a bit weak and feeble and it allows the more extreme elements the hardline elements the revolutionary committees to build support so baker moin's biography of Khomeini quotes him talking to a friend, we keep the hostages, finish our internal work, then release them.

46:15Dominic Sandbrook:This has united our people. We can put the constitution to the people's vote without difficulty and carry out the presidential and parliamentary elections. And when we've finished all these jobs, then we can let the hostages go. So in other words, we keep them for as long as we need to cement our control of Iran.

46:33Tom Holland:And do you think also the optics of it is that you keep a hostage to ensure that your enemy won't do anything. And even though perhaps the United States were not planning by this stage a military invasion or anything, it might generate subliminally in the minds of Iranian revolutionaries the sense that their revolution is under threat by holding the hostages.

46:56Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, possibly, possibly. And of course, might give you a little bit of security, you know? Yeah. The Americans won't attack us now because we have 52 of their people held hostage. Now, the hostage takers did have a list of demands. They wanted the United States to hand over the Shah for trial. They wanted the Americans to issue a formal apology for the coup of 1953. So that sort of sense of history again. And they wanted American banks to release all Iran's frozen assets. But I think these demands are completely beside the point. And this is something that Americans never really realized, that the White House, the State Department, could never quite get into their heads.

47:33Dominic Sandbrook:that the demands were irrelevant because Khomeini and the clerics didn't want to release the hostages. They were too useful because right away he gets results. The interim government of Barzagan, the goatee-bearded guy and all these people, they resigned days after the embassy seizure. They were shocked by the embassy seizure. They resigned and Khomeini thought, well, brilliant, because basically now the hardliners are left unchallenged to wheel power in my name, which is what he wanted. But the Americans, I think, didn't really realize this. Most people in Washington thought that the Iranians would be keen to negotiate.

48:10Dominic Sandbrook:And in the State Department, the working assumption was probably this is all about money. And we can do a deal. We can release frozen Iranian bank assets. And that way we'll get the hostages back. And this will take weeks, worst case months, but it's perfectly doable. And in fact, the mad thing, some of Carter's re-election team thought this would work in his favour. So he's going to be facing a challenge from Chappaquiddick's Ted Kennedy. And they think, well, this will allow Carter to wrap himself in the flag. Kennedy is playing politics. Well, you know, the president is doing all he can for the hostages.

48:51Dominic Sandbrook:And Carter's chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, said, let's keep this on the front pages. That's mad. That's the worst strategy. I know, I know, it is a mad strategy. He said, I quote, it will provide a nice contrast between Carter and our friend from Massachusetts in how to handle a crisis. Oh, God. I mean, neither of them are very good in a crisis, that has to be said. No. So Carter takes this whole business incredibly seriously. He can't sleep. He's always going off to prayer meetings. He insists on personally meeting the families of all the hostages. His aides become quite worried about him.

49:26Dominic Sandbrook:And they say, you know, he's just constantly going on about hostages having all these meetings. And a lot of this, I think, is guilt. Because when he was asked by congressional leaders, you know, is this kind of our fault for admitting the Shah? He snapped at them in a very, I don't give a damn whether or not you like the Shah, he said. And the tetchiness suggests to me that he feels personally responsible because he admitted the Shah. He didn't really want to do it. He gave in, he let the Shah in, and this is the result. However, in the short term, oddly, it does work in his favour, because this is a thing that's often sort of elided in accounts of the hostage crisis.

50:08Dominic Sandbrook:There was a big jump in his approval rating in November 1979.

50:12Tom Holland:Well, because you rallied to the flag, don't you? Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's like in the wake of 9-11, disastrous intelligent failure. Everyone thinks Bush is brilliant.

50:19Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, exactly. But this sort of spike in his popularity will only be sustainable if he gets the hostages out. If he doesn't get them out, it's bound to fade. And the other thing is, what he wants to do, and what his chief of staff wants to do, they want to make his presidency now all about getting the hostages home, because they think it will work in his favour. But that's so reckless, because if he's mortgaging his presidency to the decisions of people in Tehran that he doesn't understand. Now, the other thing is, I say people he doesn't understand. Nobody in Washington still understands the Ayatollah Khomeini.

50:58Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, you were talking in our previous episodes about the Ayatollahs, his apocalyptic sense, his, you know, the sort of the red raw intensity of his eschatological theological vision. No one in Washington has the slightest sense of this. I mean, the National Security Council's Iran specialist guy called Gary Sick wrote afterwards. Gary Sick. Gary Sick was his name. nobody knew what kind of person Khomeini was he was simply beyond the experience if not the imagination of anyone in the United States government they have no sense of this and what Khomeini then does which they didn't expect he loves this and he personalizes it and he makes it into a duel between himself and Jimmy Carter so Khomeini gave interviews to all three American networks pretty much straight after the seizure of the US embassy.

51:54Dominic Sandbrook:He was completely unflappable. He was completely unrepentant. He said the hostages were spies. This is all Carter's fault. It's Carter who's the criminal breaking international law by admitting the Shah. And he mocked Carter. This is, again, you think of the Ayatollah as so grim and formidable, which of course he was. But there is a bit of the school bully in him, I have to say. He says explicitly, Carter is beating an empty drum. Carter does not have the guts to engage in military action. Weak, weak, weak.

52:27Tom Holland:Yeah. But I wonder also, though, whether there isn't, you know, we talked about this apocalyptic vision that the Ayatollah has. And Iranian Shiism, I think, is massively influenced by this kind of the dualist traditions of Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, this sense of the world divided into rival forces of good and evil. And he's not just demonizing Carterism. He is also literally demonizing America, because the day after the students occupy the U.S. embassy, he coins this phrase, the great Satan. and I'm sure most of our listeners will have a sense of the great Satan as the phrase that is most often used by Islamic militants to describe America and the thing is that this isn't a Quranic phrase the ayatollah basically seems to have made it up and in the I mean in the Quran the figure of Satan isn't the figure that would be familiar to kind of Christians the sense of a terrifying demonic figure contesting the rule of the world with the divine forces of good.

53:34Tom Holland:But Satan is a kind of a tempter. He's the person who seduces devout Muslims from the path of righteousness. But I think the Ayatollah is kind of making the figure of Satan into a kind of a Manichean figure of evil. And that's what America becomes for him. And of course, in America as well, you also have this Manichean sense of good and evil. And both sides now are starting to think of the other as a literal cosmic representation of evil.

54:11Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, I think that's true. Because remember that in America, we were saying in a previous episode, American TV networks previously devoted five minutes a year to Iran. To the Shah going skiing. I mean, now this becomes this huge TV spectacle. So we've talked in previous series, for example, the Jack the Ripper series, about how important the media can be in kind of framing a crisis and creating a story and how important it is in mediating all these things, constructing stories, I suppose. And this is a really good example because the American networks all start running special programs about the hostage crisis.

54:48Dominic Sandbrook:So ABC led the way. They had a show called America Held Hostage. It ran every single night. And every edition of this show began day 57, day 58. You know, the sort of sense of a ticking clock. I think the whole thing is incredibly unsettling. And the scenes from Iran seem much more alien to American viewers than, say, the scenes of Red Square. yes because they're in military uniforms like kind of western uniforms there was something unbelievably alien i would say to a to an you're watching it in you know wichita kansas or something this might as well be happening on an alien planet as far as you're concerned and you talked about the manichaeanism the good versus evil sense of it is so important we already mentioned this is only four years after the fall of south vietnam after the end of a story that was so confused and grubby and morally ambiguous in which America was often painted as the villain and many Americans believe that they were the villains and this is a story in which it seems to Americans this is clear-cut good versus evil there are clean-cut hostages many of whom are in their 20s and there are these howling mobs shouting about the great Satan I mean it's a story it had colossal cut through the families the mothers of the hostages became tv stars so when a particular hostage might be dragged out on tv on American tv his mother would then be dragged out and she would be crying for the cameras and whatnot there was a mother who went to Iran called Barbara Tim her son Kevin was the youngest hostage he was a marine she got into Tehran.

56:29Dominic Sandbrook:She got to see him for 45 minutes and talked to him about the fortunes of his high school basketball team who had made, I believe, the Wisconsin State Championships. That must have cheered him up. That's what they talked about. I mean, there were also, I have to say, some very, mentioning Vietnam, you know, there is that tradition of the anti-war left. There are some, shall we say, colourful visitors to Tehran. Jane Fonda doesn't go. No, but some Vietnam, some clergymen, some lefty clergymen go. So at Christmas, the hostages had the treat of a visit from these clergymen led by a veteran peace activist called William Sloan Coffin.

57:04Tom Holland:And so you've got diplomats called sick.

57:08Dominic Sandbrook:You've got clergymen called Coffin. But wait for it. This is unbelievable. This bloke turned up and he met the hostages and he said to them, they were hoping for an inspiring message from an American priest. And he said, stop feeling sorry for yourselves. He said, I envy you having an extended period of peace and quiet to rest and think. And their hostages listened to this in stupefaction. And then when the meeting was over, he went in front of the cameras and he said on American TV, yeah, we scream and shout about the hostages, but very few Americans heard the screams of tortured Iranians. And this kind of thing, obviously, the hostages don't want to hear this.

57:44Dominic Sandbrook:And then actually, it possibly even worse than this. a few weeks later another group of radical activists visited the embassy and they were led by a guy who was a native american activist with the unimprovable name of john thomas and john thomas had he'd previously occupied wounded knee in 1973 and now he led the iranian crowd chanting

58:06Tom Holland:death to carter i thought you're gonna say death to custer yes to well yeah that's at the u.s embassy

58:12Dominic Sandbrook:so maybe he was misheard maybe he was shouting death to custer who knows anyway the peak of all the sort of um interest in the hostages came at christmas so i mentioned bruce lengan who was the most senior diplomat taken hostage in the foreign ministry his wife penny gave a very moving interview to the washington post does he get special treatment or not um perhaps slightly better treatment but still not great yeah okay i think the fact that they're in the foreign ministry meant it wasn't quite as bad as elsewhere but it's you know wasn't a bundle of laughs so his wife penny said you know it's a it's a very kind of um as long as you're not too cynical it's a very touching interview she says i'm going to be decorating our house with a wreath and advent candles as normal because that's what bruce want me to do she says i take comfort in bruce's captivity from ringing the bells at my local church i hope other people will do the same i think it's such a lovely symbol it conveys hope and joy like jane of arc well a bit like jane of arc and and people did do this actually people were very moved by this and then she says we've got an old oak tree in the garden and i've tied a yellow ribbon around it and she's inspired she says by a number one single from 1973 which was tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree by tony orlando and dawn because i don't want to be too cynical i can't bring myself to listen to it because i'm worried that if i listen to it you'll sob no i'm worried i will i will scoff in a cruel and an unfeeling way and i don't want to do that so this song was inspired by stories about the u.s cavalry in the american civil war women whose sweethearts were cavalrymen would wear yellow ribbons in their hair so it is said well how did the old oak tree come into it well penny langan tied a yellow ribbon around this oak tree yeah but in the song no she was inspired by the song i know but if it's if but if the women

1:00:06Tom Holland:are tying yellow ribbons in the hair how did they come up with the idea for the oak tree in the song it's her idea that's her idea no it's not it's the idea of um tony orlando and dawn you'll have

1:00:15Dominic Sandbrook:to ask tony orlando and dawn how they made the leap from the ribbon in the hair to the ribbon around the tree i mean it's quite a leap if there are any musicologists out there let us know the important fact is that she tied the yellow ribbon around her oak tree and then she said one of these days Bruce is going to untie that yellow ribbon and it's going to be out there until he does and Tom if you don't have a tear in your eye listening to this there's something wrong with you people lots of people did anyway even if you didn't hey I do find that affecting they tied it to trees they tied them to lampposts they tied them to flags Jimmy Carter put a yellow ribbon on his Christmas tree you see that's a that's a political error isn't it well he said He also, this is typical miserablism from Jimmy Carter.

1:01:00Dominic Sandbrook:He said, I'm not going to turn on the lights on the Christmas tree. Or the heating. Yes. His thermostat is set at, you know, zero or whatever. He's traveling on the bus to save energy. He doesn't turn on the, he says, I'm not going to turn on the lights on the Christmas tree till the hostages come home. And since they don't come home, does that mean he's got to leave the Christmas tree up until they come home? No, I don't think he does that. tabby is pointing out that jimmy carter's cardigans would keep him warm so no wonder he's got the thermostat down actually there was a yellow ribbon so the super bowl stealers versus rams there was a huge yellow ribbon tied around the stadium wow i don't americans must think it's mad that we're laughing at this but anyway i'm not laughing at it you are so i mean i don't want to laugh at the hostage crisis obviously there are some mad things connected with it though so there were pro-war demonstrations on college campuses so there were students for example ohio state chanting nagasaki hiroshima why not iran i mean that's a change from the vietnam war protests princeton students waving bedsheets in which they'd written nuke the ayatollah there were some mad songs so i know you like a song are you familiar with take your oil and shove it by bobby baker

1:02:17Tom Holland:No Dominic I'm not but I am familiar with that great song by the Baritone Dwarfs Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran Yes Based on Barbaran by the Beach Boys

1:02:30Dominic Sandbrook:Do you know there were more than, I think there were six different Bomb Iran songs Done by different bands all based on the Beach Boys Barbaran

1:02:37Tom Holland:Not good news for the hostages if Taran gets nuked No it wouldn't be good news And also, you can kind of understand the Ayatollahs wanting their own nuclear weapon.

1:02:49Dominic Sandbrook:Well, they've been provoked because American toy companies have started selling dolls of the Ayatollah. How many have you seen this? And I'm going to read you the advertising copy. Available for those who want a strike back. Make him your prisoner. Act now. Get rope, pins, other torture equipment. Oh my God. and then the words fabulous gift item

1:03:17Tom Holland:imagine your child opening that at christmas oh thanks mommy but then my favorite my favorite

1:03:23Dominic Sandbrook:story there was a brothel in the arena called the mustang ranch and they put up a sign on the door that said no more iranian students will be permitted on these premises until the hostages are released how many iranian students were going to the mustang ranch i mean i don't know how much custom they were losing through that that making a stand now on a more serious note what's happened to the most controversial iranian uh living in america not i think a client of the mustang ranch there's somebody who was not a stranger to the escort industry and this is the shah the shah you may remember had arrived at the cornell medical center for emergency treatment he had complications in the surgery the cancer didn't go away there was more suffering ahead because he had to endure bedside visits from henry kissinger and frank sinatra will the torture never

1:04:15Tom Holland:end well it didn't actually why what's frank sinatra doing turning up i mean i actually quite

1:04:19Dominic Sandbrook:like frank sinatra virus in hospital really well you see me so yeah yeah i think frank sinatra at this point has moved to the right i'm guessing because he's quite pally with reagan so and maybe showing solidarity with the Shah is part of Frank Sinatra's vibe. Maybe he's just a hospital visitor. Maybe. So the Carter administration, still not terribly keen on the Shah, they basically kicked him out again. They said, we want you to go and in December they said, we've arranged for you to go to Panama. So he moved to Panama and the dictator of Panama at the time, General Torrijos, was not a good host.

1:04:53Dominic Sandbrook:He charged the Shah $21 ,000 a day for board and lodging, which seems harsh. and he also i think the expression is trolled the shah by appointing to supervise him in his exile a marxist sociology professor that's the worst kind of professor exactly and the worst kind of marxist the worst kind of sociologist the worst kind of professor every day the shah would get up feeling incredibly sorry for himself and ill and this bloke was hanging around lecturing him about the evils of imperialism the shah was still he still thought he would get back to iran So General Torrios in Panama, as part of his sort of winding the Shah up, said to him, you're a bit like Napoleon in exile, aren't you?

1:05:34Dominic Sandbrook:You're like Napoleon on St Helena. And the Shah said no, because Napoleon never got back. But I will. My dynasty will prevail.

1:05:43Tom Holland:Well, time will tell, I guess, as we record this. Who knows?

1:05:46Dominic Sandbrook:So he ends up, finally he moves on from there to Egypt. He's very, very ill indeed. The cancer was spread. And the Shah died on the 27th of July, 1980. His last words supposedly, which he whispered again and again, were, Iran is Iran, which is exactly what you would want him to say, I suppose. The reaction from the Islamic Republic, probably not as gracious as one would hope. Right. So the official Iranian news agency issued a statement. He died in disgrace, misery and vagrancy. And Radio Tehran, the bloodsucker of the century, has died at last. So that's harsh. I mean he was a bloodsucker to be fair He was?

1:06:28Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah That's harsh

1:06:29Tom Holland:I mean he lavished masses of money on ludicrous French food in celebrating Cyrus the Great

1:06:38Dominic Sandbrook:He did but I think it's harsh to go from that to calling him a bloodsucker It's a metaphor Okay fine I mean I think you're I'm not saying he's literally a vampire If there are any Shah friendly Iranian exiles listening I'm distancing myself from Tom here He did I mean he did loot Iran Well he was very corrupt He was very corrupt. He was weak. He had loads of palaces. And he was foolish, I think. But I don't think he's one of the worst tyrants of the century. I mean, he had a pretty hideous secret police. I mean, this is a mad thing to say, given that they were a hideous secret police. But they weren't as hideous as some.

1:07:10Tom Holland:On the hideous mistakes, how do you think they compare to the Islamic Republic secret police?

1:07:14Dominic Sandbrook:This is very rare for the rest of history. I'm just going to come out and say I don't know. Okay. Well, I suppose it depends which side you're on, probably. I'd be more likely, I think, to end up on the wrong side of the Islamic Republic's secret police. I definitely would. Well, you definitely would, no question. Anyway, the Egyptians organised a state funeral for the Shah. President Sadat was the chief mourner. Jimmy Carter, do you think he went? No, I don't think he did. Of course he didn't go. By this point, he's effing and blinding against the Shah. Does Frank Sinatra go? No, but I'll tell you who did go.

1:07:46Dominic Sandbrook:He flew economy, and that shows his commitment. Friend of the show, Richard Milhouse Nixon. He flew economy to Cairo to give the eulogy. And do you know what he said of the Shah? He said, he was a real man. Unlike who? Unlike Jimmy Carter, obviously.

1:08:06Tom Holland:Had Nixon gone to the Cyrus the Great Party?

1:08:08Dominic Sandbrook:No, I don't think he did. I'd like to think that Spiro Agnew, his vice president, went, but I'm not certain. I'd have to check. Anyway, Nixon said the Shah was a real man. and Jimmy Carter's treatment to the Shah is one of the black pages of American history.

1:08:23Tom Holland:I mean, that's really poor for Carter, isn't it? Because on the one hand, he's let the Shah in and all the hostages have been taken. And on the other hand, he doesn't get any credit for it at all. He's lost every way.

1:08:34Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. Now, actually, by this point, Carter's got bigger things to worry about. So he hasn't been able to turn on the White House Christmas lights. That's one thing. Because, of course, the hostages have not been released. And the longer this has gone on, the rallying around the flag has weakened and the perception of weakness has built and built. And it's not just about Iran. We talked about the inflation, and the economy has got worse and worse. So the Federal Reserve, under its new monetarist boss, Paul Volcker, a really important figure in economic history in the last 50 years or so, they've put up interest rates to squeeze inflation.

1:09:09Dominic Sandbrook:So interest rates will peak at almost 18 % in the spring of 1980. Really, really punishing. the result is the american economy in january 1980 goes into a deep recession a million jobs in manufacturing alone are lost in the next few months and that's the picture at home the picture abroad is even worse carter was getting a hammering for being too weak even before the iranian revolution all this talk about you know communism in the ascendant america going backwards but now it seems like actually just as people have predicted the islamic revolution is spreading So two weeks after the American embassy seizure, Islamist militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

1:09:51Dominic Sandbrook:And as you will know, Tom, that is the one place in Islam that matters more than any other, effectively. It's literally Mecca. There's two weeks of fighting before they're evicted by Saudi troops. Hundreds of people are killed. Khomeini from Tehran says, this occupation was a false flag operation. It was the work of criminal American imperialism and international Zionism. And as mad as it sounds, a lot of people believed him. So there are demonstrations against America after this, everywhere from Turkey to Indonesia and the Philippines. In Islamabad and Pakistan and Tripoli and Libya, mobs literally burn the US embassy to the ground.

1:10:35Dominic Sandbrook:They raise it to the ground. There is a sort of sense, and this is unprecedented, that the muslim world has risen up and is in is is in a war against the united states well against

1:10:48Tom Holland:the great satan i mean i think that phrase is really taking fire yes i mean time magazine a

1:10:54Dominic Sandbrook:couple of days after this announced that khamenei was its man of the year and time magazine which speaks of course so often for kind of middle america said you know his revolution it matters more than any political event since Hitler's conquest of Europe. And now that may sound overblown to some listeners, but that was the thinking in 1979, 1980. And actually, were they necessarily wrong when we look at the last, you know, 40 years or so? And then I'll tell you who's been absent from this conversation, finally about to enter the chat, the Kremlin. Because on Christmas Day, 1979, the policymakers in the Kremlin are themselves very alarmed about radical Islam.

1:11:34Dominic Sandbrook:Of course, because they have a lot of Muslims within the borders of the Soviet Union in Central Asia. And they decide they're going to intervene in Afghanistan to support their communist client regime in Kabul against the Mujahideen, the insurgents who are already being funded, ironically, by the Americans. And Jimmy Carter is at Camp David. He's watching a film called The Black Stallion with his daughter Amy. When he gets a call, Soviet troops have crossed the Amudarya River, the Oxus, once crossed by alexander the great and they've gone into afghanistan and he thinks oh my god like it couldn't get worse and he tells congress a few days later we are now facing the greatest threat to peace since the second world war it's as though all across this kind of what they call the crescent of crisis going through the middle east into kind of central asia and beyond communism radical islam are on the march and Western democratic capitalism is embattled.

1:12:33Dominic Sandbrook:So what's a poor peanut farmer to do? Right. So there's a real sense now among the American people of retreat and failure. Carter's approval ratings are tanking. And a lot of his advisors, don't forget, the election is in November. Only months to go now. And a lot of his advisors are thinking, if we do not do something now, we are doomed. His chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, I mentioned him a couple of times. There's a story in his memoirs. One day, his nephew, who was 12 years old, said to him, why doesn't the president actually do anything? Why doesn't he do anything? And Hamilton Jordan said to him, well, like what?

1:13:09And this kid said, bomb Iran, wipe them all out.

1:13:13Dominic Sandbrook:A lot of my friends at school say that Jimmy Carter doesn't have the guts to do anything. You know who they need?

1:13:19Tom Holland:Yeah. General Curtis LeMay, the guy who thought nuclear war was a good thing.

1:13:25Dominic Sandbrook:In an alternative universe where George Wallace had become president in 1976 with Curtis B. LeMay as his running mate, the Iranian Revolution, things would have taken a very different turn, I think. But actually, do you know what? This little brat's mates are wrong. Jimmy Carter does have the guts to do something. Because on the 22nd of March, 1980, Carter summons his national security team to Camp David. And he says, okay, fine. It's time to consider a really drastic option. and he turns to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his military chiefs now unveil the plan for one of the most daring gambles in American history, a plan for an elite special forces unit to fly into the heart of Iran to make their way into Tehran and to rescue the hostages.

1:14:13Dominic Sandbrook:It's an unbelievably jaw-droppingly audacious plan. But, Tom, will it work? Well, you'll have to wait until the next episode to find out. Cliffhangers.

1:14:23Tom Holland:We've got them. And if you want to hear, well, you can join our very own elite special forces unit, the Rest is History Club. And by doing that, you'll be able to hear that last episode right away. And of course, you'll get a whole host of extra benefits as well. And you can sign up, of course, at therestishistory.com. Dominic, thank you. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

1:15:22Tom Holland:The End Get tickets at SchmigadoonBroadway.com.

1:15:55Dominic Sandbrook:paradise.com.

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