The "Iranian Hostage Crisis" started 40 years ago today

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What leftist POS would down vote that statement?

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They don’t like to be reminded of Carter or his massive frick up.

Guarantee they weren’t even alive then or they wore diapers during it.

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444 days of captivity for 52 people. I can't even fathom that statement.

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Ridiculous this was allowed to continue as long as it it did.

This was when Carter ushered in Modern Day terrorism with the Iran Regime.

Jimmy Carter's legacy

The Iranian Revolution and the Iran Hostage Crisis has defined a good part of US FP, and the net effect of that FP has been negative. Without the hostage crisis, I'm skeptical we would have supported Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War, and I'm skeptical Iran-Contra would have been as big a scandal, or if it even would have occurred at all. I think, in some way, the inability of America to impose its will on Iran played a large role in American response to 9/11, though the scale of the event would have led to some response. The point of I'm ultimately making is that the Iranians are extremely pragmatic, and writing them off as unreasonable misunderstands them entirely.

In all this, the Iranian have emerged (or always were) among the most pragmatic parties in the ME, as despite the hardliner rhetoric, in actual practice, the Iranians are much more willing to offer concessions than other groups in the region. The Iranian Hostage Crisis itself is an example of how the Iranian leadership class was guided by rational cost-benefit analysis, rather than the rhetoric of the clerics. The crisis itself was used by the cleric class to consolidate power among the sundry revolutionaries, with the clerical class winning out over the Marxists and the Democratic Liberals. But the landscape had changed by 1981, as the invasion by Iraq changed Iranian national interest, and thus the Iranians sought a negotiated settlement rather than prolong the crisis, and risk overt military engagement with the US while fighting the Iraqis.

The concession itself encouraged future American governments to use sanctions to shift Iranian national interest to something America could live with, but without an attempt at rapprochement in the coming years, after the nuclear deal fell apart, the Iranians could be convinced that overt regime change with the American military is the policy, and thus whatever concessions they offer would be meaningless, ultimately.

The deal negotiated by the 5+1 group should have been seen as an entryway to further negotiations. Instead, I believe Trump was misled by Netanyahu that the Iranians would beg to negotiate once sanctions were reimposed, at which point a better deal could be negotiated. Though the Iranians would obviously prefer the end of the sanctions regime, they've developed a black market economy that can sustain the sanctions, with the help of lots of other countries, including many the US considers allies. The inability of the US to get multilateral support for the sanctions regime itself also dates back to the Iranian Hostage Crisis, as major European countries only paid lip service to the sanctions imposed, and always sought other methods of trade with Iran. The sanctions still had an effect, as did every sanctions program, but the Iranian GDP still grew from the beginning of the sanctions program in 1979 to 2012 by 565%. The Iranian economy experienced contraction even before the Iran deal in 2015 and sanctions relief, and that contraction continued until the re-imposition of the sanctions program in 2018. Thus the net effect of sanctions isn't strong enough to impose change on Iranian national interest. What leaving the deal meant is that the Iranians, or at least the Supreme Leader, won't allow negotiations with the US going forward, as he said before the negotiations that the US has no compulsion to keep to its word, due to the nature of the US political system. Rouhani disagreed, and went forward with the deal, and has ultimately had to abide by the SL's directive not to negotiate with the US, despite pressure by France's Macron to arrange a meeting in New York during the UN assembly during the summer. The renewed sanctions program has also driven countries to try to develop alternatives to the SWIFT system, which would bypass the need to trade in US dollars.

This directive and the Iranian parallel economy undercuts Netanyahu's notion that the Iranians would come to the bargaining table after sanctions were reimposed. Instead, the Iranians understood that in order to negotiate this time, they would have to build leverage so that they would have to give up something America and specifically Israel would want them to give up. In addition to building centrifuges and missiles, Iran's response to maximalist pressure by the US has shown the KSA that America is unwilling to protect it, has shown that they are willing to close shipping lanes, and has encouraged the UAE to reopen dialogue with Iran. There are reports that MBS felt insulted that America would allow Iran to attack so brazenly, and has used channels in the Iraqi government to offer talks to the Iranians.

The actions of this past summer were designed by the Iranians to gain leverage if negotiations were forthcoming. It would have been much easier to use the Iran Deal as the basis for further negotiations, but for some reason, that option was never on the table for the Trump administration. The sanctions program of the US-led triad has been a failure, and outside of outright war, which would be disastrous long-term for everyone involved, I don't see a way outside pressure will change Iranian interest enough for the Iranians to give up their regional objectives. While I'm the first to admit the deal was not ideal, it was a starting point for rapprochement, and I would argue that liberalizing trade relations with Iran would be the best way to undermine Iranian religious rule. Thus I believe withdrawing from the deal was a mistake, and given that the Iranians are reticent to negotiate, believing the Americans will never negotiate in good faith, I'm skeptical that anything will work on reigning in the Iranians other than outright war, a war which America will have to fight, not Israel or the KSA.

Ultimately I want to dispel the notion that the Iranians are unreasonable. They want what they have had for near a millennia, which is dominating the region, as the Turks and Persians have been the major powers in the ME since the fall of Baghdad, not the Arabs. The Iranian ruling class is pragmatic, and has used that pragmatism to build allies among targeted disaffected groups all throughout the ME, groups who do the fighting for them, which insulates Iran from the consequences of its FP to a large degree.