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I understand that Carters hands were tied while the hostages were in Iran. He could have tried another special forces operation, but still there would have been a lot of risk. Now the day the hostages were released we should have launched a massive retaliatory strike on Tehran. In fact we should have lit it up like Dresden or Tokyo in WW2, and that would have served as a painful reminder to all who would dare threaten the United States what would happen to them. We have the most powerful military in the world for a reason, lets use it to protect our citizens and our interest. If our enemies fear us they will leave us alone. We sometimes need to remind the tyrants of the world why they need to fear having us as an enemy.
I understand that Carters hands were tied while the hostages were in Iran. He could have tried another special forces operation, but still there would have been a lot of risk. Now the day the hostages were released we should have launched a massive retaliatory strike on Tehran. In fact we should have lit it up like Dresden or Tokyo in WW2, and that would have served as a painful reminder to all who would dare threaten the United States what would happen to them. We have the most powerful military in the world for a reason, lets use it to protect our citizens and our interest. If our enemies fear us they will leave us alone. We sometimes need to remind the tyrants of the world why they need to fear having us as an enemy.
We do not exist in the vacuum. And the US is not strong enough to completely disregard the rest of the world even today, back then the USSR was still a superpower. An all-out attack on Iran would push them into the arms of the Soviets, despite their major ideological differences.
And attaching a country _after_ the hostages are released is only making sure no other hostages are ever released alive.
We do not exist in the vacuum. And the US is not strong enough to completely disregard the rest of the world even today, back then the USSR was still a superpower. An all-out attack on Iran would push them into the arms of the Soviets, despite their major ideological differences.
And attaching a country _after_ the hostages are released is only making sure no other hostages are ever released alive.
The Soviets would not have risked all out war to protect a nation that caused its own predicament. They were not stupid.
Your right hostage taking nations would never release our people again, but if it became understood what would happen to such nations would be having their capital bombed to rubble I suspect the hostage taking would stop. These pathetic places would bend over backwards not to offend us. By negotiating with, appeasing or even backing some of these thugs and tyrants we have empowered them. Weakness is always rewarded with being attacked or harassed by the bullies of the world.
An all-out attack on Iran would push them into the arms of the Soviets, despite their major ideological differences.
I dont think the mullah and soviets could have worked together.
n the course of the revolution, Islamcist mobs and militias attacked secular leftist orgainizations and individual activists all over Iran killing hundreds. The leftists responded with counter attacks of their own. One of these invovled a bomb cocnealed in a pulpit that killed a senior mullah giving a rousing sermon in a mossque and a car bomb attack on a hotel that had been siezed by pro ayatollah militants which killed dozens.
After the Ayatollah won, he continued to arrest and execute hundreds (if not thousands) of other left wingers. A certain number escaped to the Soviet Union. Given this history, my guess is that a mass US attack might have collapsed the Islamic government leading to a counter coup by Soviet supported leftists.
Recall, if you will, WHEN the hostages were released. They were let go mere minutes after Carter left office and Reagan was sworn in. The powers-that-be in Iran knew full well that Reagan was not going to tolerate having his embassy personnel held hostage. I would imagine that they feared a rain of fire from the skies; a flock of missiles turning Tehran into dust. Carter was weak and vacillating, but Reagan was not -- and the Iranians knew it.
Nice try. The hostages were released not because Iran feared Reagan, but because the Carter administration - Warren Christopher to be specific - negotiated their release via the Algerian government.
The timing of the hostages' release was a final f*** you to Carter by the Iranians. Some conspiracy theorists claim that Reagan's staff had a hand in that; but there's no serious evidence of it.
The Soviets would not have risked all out war to protect a nation that caused its own predicament. They were not stupid.
There would not be an all out war. We were, luckily, also not stupid. At that time, the Soviets were believed to have an advantage in conventional arms (especially tanks and missiles) and parity in the nuclear weapons. This also happened before Afghanistan that showed that the Soviet army wasn't as well prepared as we thought. And I never said the Soviets would openly attack the US. Rather, like in Cuba or Vietnam, supply advanced weapons and advisers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by danielj72
Your right hostage taking nations would never release our people again, but if it became understood what would happen to such nations would be having their capital bombed to rubble I suspect the hostage taking would stop. These pathetic places would bend over backwards not to offend us. By negotiating with, appeasing or even backing some of these thugs and tyrants we have empowered them. Weakness is always rewarded with being attacked or harassed by the bullies of the world.
A retaliatory bombing indiscriminately targeting the civilian population would be a war crime under all of the conventions we signed. And it would severely compromise our standing with our NATO partners and possibly weaken our strategic position in Europe - at the time widely considered to be the main theater of the Cold War.
Could we declare war on Iran ? Probably, but as I said before, just four years after Vietnam, at the height of a pretty large recession, this would likely be a political suicide.
So the alternative would be a limiting bombing campaign targeting industrial / military / government objects. The sure way to get our hostages killed.
I dont think the mullah and soviets could have worked together.
n the course of the revolution, Islamcist mobs and militias attacked secular leftist orgainizations and individual activists all over Iran killing hundreds. The leftists responded with counter attacks of their own. One of these invovled a bomb attack killing a senior mullah giving a ropusing sermon in a mossque and a car bomb attack on a hotel that had been siezed by pro ayatollah militiants which killed dozens.
After the Ayatollah won, he continued to arrest and execute hundreds (if not thousands) of other left wingers. A certain number escaped to the Soviet Union. Given this history,my guess is that a mass US attack might have collapsed the Islamic government leading to a counter coup by Soviet supported leftists.
Active cooperation, no. But then, that's not how the superpowers fought each other during the Cold War. Instead, they merely supported the smaller power the other was fighting, typically in the form of weapons and intelligence. This what the Soviets did with regards to Vietnam and what the U.S. did with regards to Afghanistan.
But let's look a little deeper into this U.S. invasion of Iran about which some are fantasizing.
First, let's use the 1991 Persian Gulf War as a rough guide, remembering that that conflict had much more limited objectives - 1) Kicking Iraq out of Kuwait, and 2) Degrading Iraq's military capabilities to reduce their ability to cause further trouble. Marching on Baghdad was rightly considered a foolish notion.
Recall that the eleven years between 1980 and 1991 saw a great number of technological advances that considerably increased the military gap between U.S. capabilities and those of third-world powers. As I noted before, there would be no feasible way to soften up Iran the way we did Iraq with a six-week pounding from the air. We'd be limited to long-range B-52 attacks from Diego Garcia (2000 miles from Iran) and carrier strikes. And there'd be a lot fewer of those guided munitions that were used to such great effect in Iraq. Oh, and the Tomahawks, 288 of which were used against Iraq? Sorry, there weren't introduced until 1983. And those M-1 Abrams? They'd just been introduced in 1980, so were still only available in relatively small numbers, with crews that were still relatively inexperienced in using them, and like any new model were full of kinks that hadn't yet been ironed out. And unlike in Iraq, where there's nothing between the Kuwaiti border but flat desert plains, Iran is mostly mountain ranges. Go ahead, glance at a relief map of Iran, just to check out how easy the drive to Tehran would supposedly be.
And again, Iraq - where we weren't trying to depose the regime, and where we had a better military with much better weapons and nearby allies willing to allow use of their territories as staging grounds, and there wasn't some opposing superpower funneling weapons to the foe - still cost over 400 American lives. Taking down the Iranians? The only question would be whether or not we could keep the KIA under five figures. I doubt it.
But let's just say we do this. Then what?
Well, Brezhnev is probably surprised and delighted. What an outstanding opportunity to use a proxy to damage the U.S. and degrade its military capabilities on the cheap!
And Iraq? Well, Saddam Hussein comes out on top in the Iran-Iraq War (which began in September 1980). On one hand, he's not deeply in debt to Kuwait and doesn't need to invade them in order to settle that account. On the other hand, he's suddenly the power in the Middle East - and we all know how Saddam Hussein behaved when he was feeling his oats.
And Iran? Either there's a years-long U.S. occupation, costing still more American blood and treasure, or we walk away and leave a festering power-vacuum there. This would likely result in something even more problematic for American interests than the Islamic Republic, which unlike the Taliban or ISIS (classic power-vacuum-fillers in Southwest Asia) was and is at least a rational actor with which we can coexist.
Finally, this idea that just hitting Iran would set a precedent that would bring the rest of the world into line. Well, how did bombing the living snot out of Vietnam do that? It didn't. How did bombing Libya in 1986 - over the Berlin discotheque bombing that killed two U.S. servicemen - teach them to knock off their terroristic ways? It didn't - the Libyan response was to blow Pan Am 103 out of the sky, killing 270 people (178 of them Americans). How did invading Iraq in 2003 convince North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear weapons programs? It didn't. In fact, it put both countries into overdrive developing them. North Korea now has nukes, and Iran is only relinquishing their capabilities due to sanctions, not because of the Iraq precedent.
I am at a loss to see how anyone can determine that invading Iran, or even just bombing Tehran, in 1980 or 1981 could possibly make things better than they turned out historically.
FYI:
Aside from the first paragraph, this post is not addressed specifically to you, Cryptic.
There would not be an all out war. We were, luckily, also not stupid. At that time, the Soviets were believed to have an advantage in conventional arms (especially tanks and missiles) and parity in the nuclear weapons. This also happened before Afghanistan that showed that the Soviet army wasn't as well prepared as we thought. And I never said the Soviets would openly attack the US. Rather, like in Cuba or Vietnam, supply advanced weapons and advisers.
A retaliatory bombing indiscriminately targeting the civilian population would be a war crime under all of the conventions we signed. And it would severely compromise our standing with our NATO partners and possibly weaken our strategic position in Europe - at the time widely considered to be the main theater of the Cold War.
Could we declare war on Iran ? Probably, but as I said before, just four years after Vietnam, at the height of a pretty large recession, this would likely be a political suicide.
So the alternative would be a limiting bombing campaign targeting industrial / military / government objects. The sure way to get our hostages killed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cryptic
I dont think the mullah and soviets could have worked together.
n the course of the revolution, Islamcist mobs and militias attacked secular leftist orgainizations and individual activists all over Iran killing hundreds. The leftists responded with counter attacks of their own. One of these invovled a bomb cocnealed in a pulpit that killed a senior mullah giving a rousing sermon in a mossque and a car bomb attack on a hotel that had been siezed by pro ayatollah militants which killed dozens.
After the Ayatollah won, he continued to arrest and execute hundreds (if not thousands) of other left wingers. A certain number escaped to the Soviet Union. Given this history, my guess is that a mass US attack might have collapsed the Islamic government leading to a counter coup by Soviet supported leftists.
You make very good points, however we were discussing a what-if scenario when the US decides to declare war on Iran over the hostages. It's very likely that both the Ayatollahs and the Soviets would put their ideological differences aside for a chance to stick it to the US. After all, the Soviets were buddies with Khaddafi and Saddam, hardly the model heroes of socialism. "My enemy's enemy is my friend" is a very old adage.
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