Foreign Policy Case Studies: Iran Hostage Crisis

{This week, we will take a look at the Iran Hostage Crisis, as incoming Trump national security advisor, John Bolton, has expressed hawkish views towards the aforementioned country in his advocation of a preemptive military strike as the best path to a regime change beneficial to the United States' foreign policy interests (BBC News, 2018). The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1980 was a major example of how the lack of an effective coordinator and a comprehensive, coherent plan for multiple moving pieces in any foreign policy operation (especially those brought on during periods of significant domestic or foreign political pressure) significantly reduces the success of the mission and can actually do more damage in the end. Similar considerations must be taken into account before the United States decides to set aside diplomatic tools in favor of blunt, military force, as we shall see below.}

Background:

The public opinion dynamics surrounding the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1980 were heavily influenced by the larger context of the Cold War and the foreign policy shifts outlined in NSC-68. The fear engendered in the American public by NSC-68 in regards to communism and the Soviet Union’s expansionary aspirations thus impacted their perceptions of President Jimmy Carter’s handling of the Iran Hostage Crisis. Moreover, to a great extent, domestic public opinion pressure drove Carter’s subsequent decision to go ahead with an ill-fated covert military operation to rescue the hostages. After all, Carter was elected in 1977 on a platform of assertiveness against the Soviet Union, with a high point of 75% approval. NSC-68’s portrayal of Russia as a communist power threatening world domination meant that Carter, as with his predecessors Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, had an imperative to take decisive action against the Soviet Union and their perceived proxy states. Thus, the Iran Hostage Crisis shows the extent of the United States’ reliance on their containment strategy, with Iran serving to check Soviet expansion in the Middle East and North Africa, as Marxist rebels gained ground in 1979 in Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, and Afghanistan.

One of many examples of the United States supporting non-democratic leaders for strategic objectives in the Cold War, in the case of Iran the United States sought to counter the Soviet Union by supporting the CIA-installed and increasingly unpopular moderate regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The previous 1953 coup had ousted democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh, creating considerable tensions. The burgeoning Iranian Revolution insurgency in 1979 against the Shah’s rule would complicate this strategy, as hard-liner Ayatollah Khomeini gained significant followers. However, the national intelligence apparatus failed to foresee trouble in the infamous 1978 annual National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which predicted the Shah would be in power for another ten years. Contradicting the NIE’s erroneous thinking, the Shah was ousted in 1979 by Khomeini’s supporters, creating significant political instability in a country that Carter termed in 1978 an “island of stability,” seeking to reassure Americans of the success of the United States’ containment foreign policy. Worse yet, on November 4th 1979, Iranian radicals supporting Khomeini seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking sixty-six Americans hostage, including many CIA operatives in the area. Thus, the administration was left in the dark about the evolving situation on the ground.

Domestically, Carter faced considerable criticism for having admitted the Shah into the United States, an action that contributed significantly to the storming of the embassy by the Iranian radicals protesting the United States’ interventionism in their country. Facing considerable electoral pressure in the election year of 1980 as various attempts at setting up direct negotiation channels failed (with his approval ratings hovering in the low 30% range), Carter faced a critical decision point in deciding whether or not to use military force to free the hostages. In the end, while the rescue mission (dubbed Operation Eagle Claw) temporarily boosted Carter’s approval ratings, as the mission went terribly wrong those ratings inevitably tanked, as the mission’s failure on multiple fronts signaled a weak America in the face of a belligerent Soviet Union and Ayatollah Khomeini.

Evaluation:

For me, this case is explained best when considering the international paradigms of realism and the foreign policy perspective of homo bureaucraticus, as I argue in my analysis that electoral pressures reflecting the realist views of America’s Cold War foreign policy projecting onto the bureaucracy led to the mission’s failure. Operation Eagle Claw was conceived not only as a rescue mission for the trapped American hostages, but also to reassert United States strength in its realist containment policy for the domestic constituency, as Carter had run a 1976 campaign similar to his predecessors primarily on being assertive towards Soviet Union expansionism. However, with the failure of previous diplomatic attempts to secure the release of the hostages, including reaching out to Iranian moderates via the United Nations as well as economic sanctions, President Carter was desperate in 1980 to project an image of American democratic strength in the face of an increasingly belligerent Soviet Union.

Thus, a military operation to rescue the hostages held increasing appeal to the Carter administration to both check communist expansion and shore up Carter’s approval ratings, but disagreement about the size and coordination of the rescue force among the different military leaders cooperating ultimately led to various logistical failures fatal to the mission: the failures of the helicopters to fly in and out of Tehran airspace under cover of the night, the failure to anticipate the hazardous visibility created by the helicopters and transport planes at the rescue point Desert One, and the fact that the rescue point itself was too close to a main road to maintain mission secrecy. In the immediate aftermath of the failed April mission, President Carter’s approval ratings sat at began to drop further from 40% again after an initial bump inspired by the decisiveness with which voters perceived the actions of the administration.

What went wrong with the mission? There were various organizational interests in play that hampered established standard operating procedures (SOPs). The military won out in the preliminary meetings against the objections of presidential advisers Walter Mondale, Jody Powell, and Hamilton Jordan concerned with the effects of a rescue mission on Carter’s electoral fortunes. Moreover, State Department officials Warren Christopher and Cyrus Vance supported similar misgivings concerning Operation Eagle Claw, concerned that their people among the hostages in the Tehran embassy would be harmed if negotiations were not conducted first. However, an uneasy alliance formed between the hawks eager to prove their capabilities and regain the presidential trust after the Bay of Pigs and the closest presidential advisers after Carter’s presidential approval ratings were still trending downward from 40%. Already on shaky foundation as the decision to go ahead was largely one made out of electoral desperation, Operation Eagle Claw came to represent a patchwork of competing branches of the military itself. Four military commanders were chosen underneath the leadership of Major General James Vaught (Army) according to Pentagon standard operating procedures (SOPs) in missions of joint military cooperation: Colonel James Kyle (Air Force), Lt. Colonel Edward Seiffert (Marines), and Lt. Colonel Beckwith (Army). Here the SOPs that bureaucracies rely on to function efficiently in the face of high uncertainty ultimately failed, as Vaught was not physically present to coordinate the rescue mission, leading to an unclear chain of command when it came to decision-making.

Ultimately, the failure of the hostage rescue operation came down to potent public opinion pressures exerted on the Carter administration and the bureaucracy, in which bureaucratic SOPs were overcome by the inherent weaknesses of the bureaucratic patchwork assembled for the mission.

{The above forces cited in the case study are still at work today. Any foreign policy apparatus must take particular care to minimize as much as possible these pressures on key decision-makers, from politicians to those concerned with logistical operations, in order to make the best call for a country's overall domestic and foreign interests. In today's current domestic political environment and in consideration with rumblings in some corners about the need for unilateral, preemptive military operations in hotspots like Iran and North Korea, this need for clear-mindedness in our leaders is more needed than ever in U.S. foreign policy.}

 
Works Cited:

BBC News. (2018, March 23). "John Bolton: Five Things New Trump Security Adviser Believes." Retrieved March 23, 2018, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43512175.

Gallup, Incorporated. (2016). “Presidential Approval Ratings: Gallup Historical Statistics and Trends.” Retrieved October 19, 2016 from http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx.

Houghton, David Patrick. (2013). The Decision Point: Six Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy
Decision Making. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Ikenberry, G. John, and Peter L. Trubowitz. (2015). American Foreign Policy: Theoretical
Essays. 7th Edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Sigelman, L., & Conover, P. (1981). “The Dynamics of Presidential Support During International Conflict Situations: The Iranian Hostage Crisis.” Political Behavior, 3(4), p. 303-318. Retrieved October 17, 2016 from http://libweb.uwlax.edu:2101/stable/pdf/586105.pdf.

United States State Department: Office of the Historian (n.d.). “The Iranian Hostage Crisis.” Retrieved October 17, 2016 from https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/iraniancrises.