Lehuster: “Sorry, but if you think either this or the embassy take-over of 1979 resulted from excessive intiative on the part of over-enthusiastic lower-echelon commanders, you’re nuts. In both cases, the orders without a doubt came from the top.”

Lehuster, I know that the embassy takeover was done on the initiative of the students because they said so when interviewed by Mark Bowden for his book on the event, “Guests of the Ayaytollah.” The Iranian government officials involved backed up this version of the events. The Iranian mullahs didn’t know what to do about the embassy takeover at first. No orders came from the top because Khomeini rarely gave orders. He vacillated, leaning toward whatever set of advisors he talked to last. Before you start calling people crazy, you need to learn your subject, kid.

Tantor on March 28, 2007 at 10:07 PM

georgej: “Do you really think, Tantor, that they’d break their cover story for any western author? The words “plausible deniability” are operative here.”

The words most operative to your argument are “conspiracy theory.” As usual with conspiracy theories, the documented facts of reality are given less weight than the speculative fantasies of the conspiracy theorists. If you think orders came from Khomeini, produce them.

In fact, the days immediately following the revolution were chaos. Iranian mullahs are none too competent even in calm times, much less so in the turbulent times of the revolution, when factions were fighting for power and all the mullahs were looking for an angle to gain power. The facts are pretty straightforward.

The world is too disorganized for everything to be a conspiracy. This Iranian piracy could easily be the work of one cowboy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, just like an international incident was created by one cowboy Chinese squadron commander who inadvertently crashed into a Navy spy plane off the coast of China in international waters not so long ago. Such incidents reflect the poor discipline of their military units.

Tantor on March 29, 2007 at 11:16 AM

Blaise: “There is no doubt that the Iranian government backed the occupation of the US Embassy in Teheran.”

They did so after the fact. They did not initiate it, which is my point. The students came up with the idea independently and executed it on their own. Khomeini and his mullahs took possession of it after the fact when they saw political advantage in doing so.

My point is that these Third World thug regimes are not well-oiled machines with disciplined citizenry taking precise orders from well-established chains of command. In fact, they are chaotic messes where everyone is doing their own thing, where each group is trying to dominate the other group, where nobody is thinking ahead but rather everyone is reacting to what’s in front of their face now. Their leaderships are often driven by bonehead blunders their folowers make.

The embassy takeover was certainly a bonehead blunder, as many of the hostage-takers themselves admit, which cost Iran dearly. A bunch of wannabe Berkeley-ite students thought they’d pull a harmless demonstration, taking over the embassy just like American radicals took over college administration buildings, and walk away after a couple days. Instead, they tossed a steaming hot potato into the mullah’s laps which they turned into an international incident that poisons relations with America to this day.

This piracy at sea may be derived from the same Third World lack of self-control.

Tantor on March 29, 2007 at 4:41 PM