the potential Operation Eagle Claw had

In 1976 Air France Flight 139 was hijacked, onboard were 92 Israeli citizens, the hijackers diverted the flight to the African country of Uganda at the time Idi Amin was president, he supported the terrorists in their actions and allowed them to land at Entebbe Airport, several of the hostages were released but 105 (most of them Israelis) were remained to be held.



Israel launched a rescue operation named Operation Entebbe flying in a group of commandos, using a black Mercedes (since Ugandan soldiers automatically saluted a black Mercedes) to infiltrate the airport and get to the terminal, shooting their way in on site they rescued all but four who were killed, killing most of their captors (along with 45 Ugandan soldiers), and as C-130 transport planes landed nearby Israeli commandos destroyed 11 Ugandan Army Air Force MiG-17's on the ground before escaping with the hostages, it was a daring operation which was highly successful thanks to careful and precise planning.



In 1979 during the Iranian Revolution Islamic students seized the 53 remaining workers left at the US embassy in Tehran (officially breaking every rule of diplomacy at this point), in the end they were held for 444 days, but from day one as the time begun to pass and the US helpless to do anything meant they were seen across the world to be weak.

President Jimmy Carter needed a miracle and authorizedthe planned Eagle Claw, eight RH-53D Sea Stallion mine sweeping helicopters from deck of the USS Nimitz were reconfigured for the mission and were to carry Special Forces to a point in the desert codenamed Desert One very near Tehran, the Commandos would then be flown for the next night where under the cover of CIA agents be transported to the embassy, there they would engage the hostage takers and escort all 67 hostages across Roosevelt Boulevard with bombarding air support by an AC-130 gunship to cover their escape from the embassy compound.

From there they would have broken into and secured a large soccer stadium where the RH-53's would arrive at a certain time from their base in the desert and bring the Commandos and the hostages to an air base west of Tehran that would have been taken from there to an airbase previously secured by Rangers and ready to bring the hostages away from Iran in a C-141, this plane would have been covered by fighter jets (possibly of IIAF origin).

This whole operation would have had to have been carefully planned and carried out very precisely, for example the retreat to the stadium could have had numerous errors right from the get go which could have resulted in a bloodbath (on both sides), the same for defending the stadium, which could have resulted in the Special Forces having to defend their position Shughart and Gordon style, however the operation never got that far, (the forces never even got to rendezvous with the CIA agents) and resulted in a crash at Desert One resulting in three helicopters down and eight killed after a mid air collision.


The wreck after the crash at Desert One

It was due to a sand storm which the Iranians at the time called an act of God, the operation was called off and the helicopters abandoned in the desert along with classified documents that exposed the CIA agents!

It was notoriously a failure but it would have been interesting to have seen it carried out to pinpoint precision.


An early 1990's military computer program inspired by
the poor planning that led to the failure of Eagle Claw

That being said the Iranians did release the hostages early after Ronald Reagan became president, they were unharmed physically and released on full half of the Iranians after the Americans showed an act of aggression in the form of breaching their air space with military aircraft, and it showed them ready to return diplomatic ties with the new government in Washington (even though Iraq had launched their invasion three months before), it was an interesting episode and with Operation Entebbe four years before proving that a lot could be done with very little (hence the few Israeli Special Forces that rescued nearly 100 hostages after flying across half of Africa), meaning that Eagle Claw had a lot to live up to, and ended up failing miserably.

Iranian Revolution justified?

The below video shows a wonderful insight into the Iran of the early to mid 1970's before the (what it calls) the unintelligible revolution in 1979 that saw the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran.



But was the revolution (unlike the video suggests) justified for the people of Iran, the country was becoming rapidly industrialized and the division between city and country was becoming debt as the Shah became more friendly with America.

He was also buying up in hi tech arms from the United States (the F-14 Tomcat one of if not the best fighter jet in the 1970's), whom were using Iran for oil and strategic purposes, this clip from The Grumman Challenge a documentary about the sale of 80 F-14 Tomcats shows exactly what the Americans were doing.



But the rapid industrialization did very little for the average Iranian, first of all the country wasn't a democracy and the Shah was a dictator since America helped him eliminate any Prime Minister elected by the people in a coup carried out by the CIA and MI6 in 1953!

And this rapid industrialization by the United States (paid with the rapid flow of Iran's oil of course) of Iran did little only divide city and country, only a small amount of people were enjoying the wealth was one of the many causes that slowly led to the revolution.

The celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire at Persepolis in 1971 was organized by the Shah's regime, was attacked for its extravagance.

"As the foreigners reveled on drink forbidden by Islam, Iranians were not only excluded from the festivities, some were starving."

Tens of thousands of foreign workers were doing the work Iranians weren't allowed as private companies reaped the profits.



As the revolution begun several factors saw it expand until Ayatollah Khomeini returned, the Muharram protests saw up to 6 to 9 million anti Shah demonstrators march across Iran, this was probably largest protest event in history and a higher number of people than any other revolution in history.

That just tell you how this was the majority of the people getting what they wanted, after seizing American hostages in the US embassy and holding them for over 444 days the US weren't able to even rescue them, the failed Operation 'Eagle Claw' showed they couldn't even find a US friendly haven anywhere in Iran in which to launch their operation from, the RH-53D Sea Stallion choppers had to launch directly from the USS Nimitz and crashed before they could even reach Tehran!

The hostages weren't harmed showing that their takers weren't murderous savages and Iran was ruled by an Islamic government in which the people (the majority )wanted it to be.

However before leaving for the United States for cancer treatment and before the revolution exploded the Shah had ordered and paid for 160 US F-16 Fighting Falcons and other weapons , none of these had arrived and the deal which had cost millions had cost the Iranian people for nothing!

how powerful Ayatollah Khomeini was

So persuasive that he was exiled from Iran by the Shah who feared him, until his return in 1979 after the Shah was brought to the United States to get cancer treatment, almost overnight Khomeini had poured fuel on a fire that was ready to burn, the Iranian revolution caught the United States almost completely by surprise.

The Iranian Army joined Khomeini shortly after and there was a brief period of violence in Iran.

When students in Tehran took over the US embassy it led to a 444 day hostage crisis, the US were powerless to do anything, a rescue was attempted by the USS Nimitz in the Persian Gulf using a bunch of RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters, but they never even reached Tehran!

Khomeini was a real threat to others in the Middle East, he had just taken over from the biggest autocrat in the entire Middle East and brought the Iranian people to his side, Saddam Hussein especially had something to fear, as a Sunni muslim the Ayatollah was a direct threat, since the majority of Iraq's population were oppressed Shia's, his a revolution would have him ousted as president.

After the revolution Saddam saw the Ayatollah was at his weakest, the Iranian military was disbanded, most of its top officers had been executed, so on September 22nd 1980 Saddam caught them off guard sending nine divisions of the Iraqi Army into the oil fields of southern Iran, he quickly made progress.



But when the Ayatollah called for volunteers to halt the invasion what resulted was hundreds of thousands flocking to the front line, halting Saddam's invasion by simple RPG armed revolutionary guards Saddams invasion was a failure, by 1982 Khomeini had the Iranians on the offensive, Saddam retreated his forces and offered peace, but Khomeini refused.

Seeing his opportunity to spread the revolution into Iraq he begun attacking and for another six long years several attempts were made to capture Basra, the US supported Saddam since Iran was seen as a hostile enemy, but also over the fear that the Iranians may actually have defeated the Iraqis, overthrown Saddam and went on from Iraq to take over Saudi Arabia and take down Israel, (remember Hezbollah was founded in 1982 after the Israeli's invaded and is to this day funded by the Iranians).



But Saddam deployed chemicals (not seen since World War I) to kill the advancing Iranian's in their masses, over 1,000,000 soldiers were lost from both sides before the end of the horrific war in 1988, shortly afterwords Khomeini died, Iran hasn't had a war since.