INTERNATIONAL
Vanderbilt Political Review Fall 2013
FALL 2013
FEATURE
CIA
sador to Afghanistan. At 2:15 A.M., the
State Department received another call
not from Afghanistan but – surprisingly
– from the U.S. embassy in Iran; hundreds of heavily armed “revolutionaries”
had stormed the compound. While Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance
monitored the situation in Iran, another
call came at 3:20 A.M. confirming Dubs’
death. In Tehran, Danish and British diplomats pleaded with Ayatollah Khomeini to order the protesters to stand down
– which, by 6 A.M., they finally did.
After this nerve-racking night, the Carter administration began a bungled evaluation of the U.S.’s global security. Dub’s
death – perpetrated by Soviet-supported
Afghan Maoists – was a tragedy, but was
also hard to foresee and irreversible. The
more appalling reality, however, is that the
events in Tehran proved to be a full dress
rehearsal of the 444-day Iran hostage crisis that was to occur later that year, yet
the Carter administration did not substan-
tially implement preventative measures.
After February 14, Jimmy Carter could
not feasibly claim ignorance of mass resentment towards America’s presence in
Iran, nor to foreign enemies’ willingness
to target diplomats. Iranians plainly abhorred the United States’ 1953 overthrow
of their democratically elected Prime
Minister, as well as Carter’s decision to
admit Shah Pahlavi for American surgery
out of “humanitarian principle” rather
than to deport him to Iran. Clearly, Iranians were prepared to assault the American embassy to vent these grievances.
Despite the aborted February raid,
Carter and his administration remained
astonishingly ignorant of the situation on
the ground in Iran. Carter neither withdrew all American diplomats nor doubled
down on security. Reportedly, Vice-President Walter Mondale asked CIA director Stansfield Turner, “what the hell is
an Ayatollah anyway?” to which Turner replied that he himself was not sure.
Similar situational ignorance permeated the Obama administration leading
up to the September 11th, 2012 attack
on the Libyan embassy. It is not a mere
exercise in hindsight to assert that the
attack was foreseeable and preventable.
The State Department has acknowledged
ignoring multiple fervent requests for increased security at the compound. Like
Carter, Obama neither doubled down
on security nor withdrew diplomats.
The administration then systematically propagated the fiction that the attack
had spontaneously erupted from protests
over an anti-Islam video. If there were
any questions remaining, J. Christopher
Stevens’ last known communication was
“Benghazi under fire, terrorist attack.”
These facts are important insofar as
they demonstrate the administration’s
ineptitude surrounding Benghazi. Placing an ambassador in Libya’s anarchic
crucible and then systematically denying
his requests for additional security were
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