I was 17 when the Iranian revolution happened. I remember watching on television, another instance in which my father insisted, "This is history being made, right now," and pushed me to watch: The embassy staff blindfolded, an American president humiliated, indeed, our nation, humiliated by a mob of 7th-century barbarians. It was a disaster. It made us look weak. It made us look indecisive, and frankly, we had it coming, with an indecisive president who couldn't quite seem to get a grip on the problem.
Of course, many years later, we were treated to a new depth of indecisiveness with the presidency of Joe Biden, but that's another story.
Many years later, I befriended a guy who was in Tehran when the balloon went up. I cannot tell you who he was, or what he was doing there, but he was an American who spoke Farsi like a native, and could pass as a local. He was in the city when he heard the uproar start, thought, "I'd better get back to the embassy," but it was too late. He later told me, "They had the hostages all blindfolded, guys were shaking AK-47s in the air, and I was in the middle of a crowd shaking their fists and yelling 'Death to America.'" I asked him what he did next; he said, "What the hell do you think I did? I started shaking my fist and yelling 'Death to America!'" He got out of the country safely, but he never forgot that moment, or the later humiliation called Operation Eagle Claw, which failed at a place called Desert One.
The Carter administration, in April of 1980, decided to mount a rescue operation to extract the American hostages from Iran. 53 hostages were being held in Iran. The operation failed, utterly. Eight helicopters were sent to a place called Desert One, but only five arrived in working order. President Carter's staff advised him to abort the mission; he did, but during the equipment extraction, a helicopter collided with a transport aircraft carrying some of the servicemen assigned to the mission, as well as some of the choppers' jet fuel. Both aircraft were destroyed in the fire that ensued. Eight of our service members, including three Marines and five Air Force members, died. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini claimed that Allah had personally intervened in the operation, and honestly, plenty of the Iranian people at that time probably believed him. Worst of all, the bodies of the eight servicemen who were killed were taken by the responding Iranians, who did at least return the remains to the United States in May of 1980.
The failure of Operation Eagle Claw was almost certainly one of the key reasons Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 election. The hostages were released on the same day that President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated; the Iranians obviously realized that there was a new sheriff in town, and that Reagan wasn't going to play patty-cake. The hostages had been held by the vicious savages in Iran for 444 days. When Ronald Reagan took office, American families all over the nation were able, finally, to take down all those yellow ribbons.
But the humiliation of Desert One remained.
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Then came President Donald Trump, the re-named and revitalized War Department, and the new Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, a soldier himself, still with dust on his boots and blood in his eyes. Then came Operation Epic Fury.
Along with our ally Israel, the United States Air Force and Navy aviators own the sky over Iran. Our initial attack was made by USAF B-2 bombers, and as happened earlier, in Operation Midnight Hammer, when the United States and Israel took out most of Iran's nuclear development program, the Iranian regime had no idea the Spirits were overhead until weapons struck. Then, the United States and Israel started to systematically disassemble Iran's capacity to make war. The Supreme Leader, the successor to the original Ayatollah Khomeini, was reduced to room temperature in the first phase, along with a laundry list of regime and military leaders. The Iranian Navy was sent to commune with Davy Jones in his famous locker. The Iranian Air Force pilots were looking at their airplanes and seeing coffins.
Best of all, the Iranian people are rising. They, even more than we, are sick and tired of the theocratic rule of the mullahs. The Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah, is calling on the Iranian people to rise against the regime, and there may be no better time than now. It's not over yet. The regime is still lashing out. They are still dangerous. They have killed, according to some reports, as many as 10,000 of their own people who took to the streets to protest.
For the United States, though, the best part is this: The humiliation we suffered at Desert One has been redeemed. The honor of our armed forces was restored. And finally, after all these years, the families of the eight Americans who fell at Desert One can know that the sacrifice of those men was not for nothing, after all.
