Iran’s crisis is at the heart of filmmaker Barbara Kopple’s new documentary, “Desert One,” a film that points to the heroism of men who embarked on a failed project in 1980 to rescue 52 Americans detained in Tehran through Iranian revolutionaries.
In our collective cultural moment “heroes are not captured”, the film strongly reminds us that it is the commitment to serve and the will to adopt the project that profiles our heroes. The rescue of the hostages would likely have been hampered by weather situations and the lack of falsified data on the ground, however, the special forces who planned and executed the project took on enormous dangers and made enormous sacrifices for their country.
“Desert One” will premiere in theaters across the country on Friday, August 21, or be broadcast through the Virtual Cinema service that independent studios and theaters use to help local cinemas with the COVID-19 pandemic. You can locate where the film is screened through the movie’s price tickets page. If there is no affiliated theater in your city, hire opting for any theater that offers the Virtual Cinema option. If it’s too confusing for you, the movie will be available through cable, Apple TV, Amazon, Fandango, Google Play and YouTube systems on September 4.
Few national crises have hit both the public and the seizure of power by Iranian academics at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. Academics rebelled against Shah Reza Pahlavi, a leader who believed he was indebted to US oil interests and had in fact been installed as a leader after a CIA-funded coup that opposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953.
At the height of the Cold War and Mossadegh, they have become friends with the Soviet Union. According to the anti-communist domino theory reporting American policy at the time, a red Iran would be a crisis for the region and our spies chose to act.
“Desert One” begins with a history lesson about the installation and government of the Shah, educating the audience about the brutality of its savAK secret police and how the royal family’s adherence to Western values has alienated much of the country’s Islamic population.
Student activists broke into the embassy after the United States allowed the newly deposed Shah and his circle of relatives to enter the United States for medical treatment. The new government then sought to investigate the former leader for his crimes opposed to others, and there is widespread confidence in Iran that the U.S. government is making plans for army action to relocate the fallen leader.
Kopple temporarily moved on to the problem, presenting to the audience some of the hostages who would end up 444 days in captivity. The notable maxim is Kevin Hermening, a young Marine assigned to embassy security whose mother has been notoriously in Iran and negotiated a brief assembly with his son before attacking the government’s handling of the crisis.
President Jimmy Carter is running for defense and duty for his technique in the face of the crisis. Determined to use nonviolent negotiation as a tool to save the release of the hostages, he found himself confronting Ayatollah Khomeini, the devoted leader whose teachings had encouraged the revolution.
Khomeini was looking for only one thing: The United States would take its hostages once the Americans passed the Shah to the Iranian government. American politics would not allow it, because the Shah and his circle of relatives would surely be executed after their trial. There was a dead end.
Which brings us to the center of the film. Although Carter did not need to use the army force in Iran, he approved making plans for an operation to save them, a secret Delta Force team led by the unit’s founder, Charlie Beckwith. We know several of the operators and some air force pilots able to supply transportation.
It’s hard to say how obsessed Americans have become about the hostage crisis in 1980. Ronald Reagan ran for president and insisted that Carter’s military’s lack of action weakened the United States. ABC journalist Ted Koppel presented “Nightline,” a new late-night news program that takes an hour into the advances of daylight hours every night of the week. Carter’s address was paralyzed.
Carter finally learned that the negotiations were not going to be down and approved the project for April 24, 1980. All CIA agents in Iran were now held hostage at the embassy, so the attack team had spent months in news footage to collect the limited data they had. He had to plan projects.
The project included 3 EC-130E loaded with jeeps and other logistics supplies, 3 MC-130E Talons with agents and 8 RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters for the shipment of hostages. The plan to land on the bed of a dry stream on the outskirts of Tehran, go to the embassy and take out the hostages.
The operation required a minimum of six helicopters in operation to be a success and three of the 8 had mechanical disorders on the night of the attack. After the leaders took the resolution to cancel, one of the helicopters attempted to take off in a sandstorm and crashed into one of the C-130s with Delta Force troops. Eight men died in the resulting chimney and had to be abandoned when the sun came here as the sun came here as it approached.
Failure turned out to be a crisis for the Carter administration. Iranian revolutionaries paraded the burned bodies of fallen soldiers and pilots in front of television cameras before handing them over to the Red Cross. Reagan hammered the issues of his crusade and the hostage crisis is probably the main explanation for why Carter lost to him in November.
The Shah died of cancer in July 1980 and the Iran-Iraq war began in September. The hostages were no longer the iranian government’s target and its release now for the benefit of the most productive interests of all. Unfortunately, the Ayatollah felt a deep non-public aversion to Carter and tried to humiliate the American leader as much as he could.
In the run-up to Inauguration Day in 1981, Carter’s administration worked hard to negotiate and agreed to release Frozen Iranian assets in U.S. banks. Iran dragged the deal as long as it could and yet allowed the hostages to take off from a Tehran airport just an hour after Reagan’s inauguration.
Former President Carter flew to meet the hostages released in Germany, underlining his non-public commitment to the fitness and protection of Americans who unknowingly played a role in the end of his presidency.
“Desert One” exists to allow the men who carried out the project to tell their stories. Kopple firmly believes in his heroism and makes it a point of honor to tell the story of the team’s return to Masirah Island. The British Army workers’ corps occupying the airfield understood what the project was and delivered two instances of beer to the Americans with the message “To all of you, who are part of all of us, for having had the courage to try” written on one of the flaps of the cardboard box. This message remained the motto of the 8th SPECIAL Operations Squadron of the USAF: “With the courage to try.”
Kopple won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary for “Harlan County U.S.A.” in 1976. and “American Dream” of the 1990s. These films, about a miner’s strike and a strike at a meat-packing plant, show remarkable skill for the reports of men and women at the center of combat and this skill actually translates as “Desert One”.
The director also interviews academics concerned about the embassy takeover and a guy traveling on a bus who accidentally found the landing site of the operation as he crossed the desert and witnessed the entire flat disaster. The environment is sometimes respectful, but beware: a kidnapper is filled with un-American joy as she recounts her experiences.
What the film does not do is delve into the errors of the operation. There was never a complete practice before the project itself (a fact discussed in the film) and Kopple never asks anyone what kind of maintenance disorders would lead to the failure of a third of the helicopters to complete the project.
Sadness at the failure of the mission has haunted all concerned over the more than 40 years, however, “Desert One” argues that the attempt is the least bad choice you can have at the time and hopefully the special operations team may have been successful. It is your service that Kopple needs to recognize and “Desert One” is a suitable triyete.
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