IS HENRY KISSINGER TO BLAME FOR *EVERYTHING*? seriously, is there one international crisis failure you can think of that he hasn't had his nose in? the man is a nincompoop.
cop welfare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#Carter_administration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
Carter administration
Shortly before the revolution on New Year's Day 1979, American
president Jimmy Carter further angered anti-Shah Iranians with a
televised toast to the Shah, declaring how beloved the Shah was by his
people. After the revolution in February, the embassy had been
occupied and staff held hostage briefly. Rocks and bullets had broken
enough of the embassy front-facing windows for them to be replaced
with bullet-proof glass. Its staff was reduced to just over 60 from a
high of nearly 1000 earlier in the decade.[18]
The Carter administration attempted to mitigate the anti-American
feeling by finding a new relationship with the de facto Iranian
government and by continuing military cooperation in hopes that the
situation would stabilize. However, on October 22, 1979 the U.S.
permitted the Shah - who was ill with cancer - to attend the Mayo
Clinic for medical treatment. The American embassy in Tehran had
discouraged the request, understanding the political delicacy,[19] but
after pressure from influential figures including former United States
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Council on Foreign Relations
chairman David Rockefeller, the Carter administration decided to grant
the Shah’s request.[20][21][22]
The Shah's admission to the US intensified Iranian revolutionaries
anti-Americanism and spawned rumors of another U.S.-backed coup and re-
installation of the Shah.[23]
Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - who had been exiled
by the Shah for 15 years - heightened rhetoric against the “Great
Satan”, the United States, talking of what he called “evidence of
American plotting.”[24]
"You have no right to complain, because you took our whole country
hostage in 1953.”[23]
In addition to putting an end to what they believed was American
plotting and sabotage against the revolution, the hostage takers hoped
to depose the provisional revolutionary government of Prime Minister
Mehdi Bazargan which they believed was plotting to normalize relations
with the United States and extinguish Islamic revolutionary ardor in
Iran.[25]
A later study found that there had been no plots for the overthrow of
the revolutionaries by the United States, and that a CIA intelligence
gathering mission at the embassy was “notably ineffectual, gathering
little information and hampered by the fact that none of the three
officers spoke the local language, Farsi.” Its work was “routine,
prudent espionage conducted at diplomatic missions everywhere.”[26]
[edit] Planning
The seizure of the American embassy was initially planned in September
1979 by Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a student at that time. He