The news today about the stunning surprise attack on the Iranian Mullah regime, including taking out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, brings forth a wide range of emotions. While it’s not over, and the 7th Century death cult regime likely will try to lash out, this completes a sequence that started on October 7, 2023.Who could have imagined on October 7 that less than two and one-half years later Hezbollah in Lebanon would be devasted with Nasrallah killed, Hamas in Gaza reduced to a gang of mobsters with Sinwar killed, and Iran’s nuclear and missile programs devasted in June 2025 and again today, with Khamenei killed.It’s almost biblical in its implications.But it brought back some very personal memories for me.The Iranians, led by the prior Ayatollah Khomeini, took American diplomats hostage on November 4, 1979.I started studying in Moscow in January 1980, during the height of the hostage crisis. They would be held until January 1981.On April 24, 1980, Jimmy Carter launched a weak hostage rescue attempt that failed miserably through no fault of the soldiers involved. It was under staffed and equipped.I learned about the failed rescue mission when I turned on my shortwave radio. It was devastating. I wrote about it when I returned to Hamilton College in September 1980. I kept the clipping all these years, it’s below.Here are some key passages (full article below).
During the Winter and Spring of 1980 I lived and studied in Moscow, USSR. Life in Moscow was neither a disaster nor an unusually difficult experience – for most of my stay, that is. There was, however, a lowpoint which was shared by many others.My lowpoint came in April. I had been in the Soviet Union for about three months, and – to put it mildly – I was fed up. I was fed up with the lines for food, the pushing in the overcrowded buses, the old ladies who elbowed me during the rush hour metro crunch. I was fed up with waiters who didn’t want to take my order, with mail that arrived opened, with steel teeth. Most of all, I was fed up with the constant, ubiquitous, endless barrage of anti-American, anti-Western propaganda.My lowpoint came about quite unexpectedly. I woke up at 7 a.m., as I did six mornings a week, and turned on my shortwave radio. My radio was my line to the outside world – my parents, my friends, my sanity. The BBC was my mother, the Voice of America my father, Radio Israel my infrequent but necessary inspiration.I tuned in to the BBC at the end of the news broadcast. I’ll never forget the words:
“We’ll have more on the unsuccessful American hostage rescue mission after ‘News About Britain’.”
I turned off the radio. I stayed in bed, immobile, devastated, unable to face the Soviet world. I wanted to run and hide, but there was no place to run and certainly no place to hide. Life became very claustrophobic. I wanted to be elsewhere….
Nothing, however, hurt as much as the disappointment of my Soviet friends. That afternoon I stopped by a friend’s apartment. We didn’t say a word. We just sat silently, staring down at the floor, slowly shaking our heads. Finally he blurted out: “How could you do such a thing? How can I have faith in a country which doesn’t have helicopters that work. You put a man on the moon, but your helicopters don’t work!” He was almost in tears. I had no answers. The moon meant nothing. The helicopters simply didn’t work….
For me it was depressing. For my Soviet friends it was the loss of their future. It was the loss of their belief in a better world. A belief which kept them going through years of harassment. For my Soviet friends, the failure of a helicopter was the failure of the Knight in Shining Armor they had so often dreamed about. America cannot defend her own. How is she to defend those who dream about her? ….
I’ve often thought about how my life would have been had the helicopters flown. I would have run through the dormitory screaming, spreading the news to friend and foe alike. I would have screamed and screamed and screamed. People would have cared. People would have understood.
I would have hugged the fat old ladies selling mushrooms. The East Europeans and Third Worlders [in my dorm] would have congratulated me and told me how much they wanted to go to America. I could have taunted the Iranian Communists. My Soviet friends would have celebrated. It could have been so great!
But I had to stay in bed.
It’s actually quite emotional for me to read that for the first time in decades. It made today so much more special, so much more meaningful.
It’s said that revenge is a dish best served cold. Today the militaries of the United States and Israel served a very cold dish.
God bless America and Israel.
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