How would Scoop Jackson have handled the Iranian hostage crisis?

If Henry "Scoop" Jackson had been elected President in 1976, how would he have handled the Iranian hostage crisis? Being what we would call today a fierce "neoconservative", would he have declared war on Iran and sent in the troops? How would this have affected the Soviet Union, its relations with America and would this have butterflied away their eventual invasion of Afghanistan?
 
I recall that famed neocon Richard Perle actually served as Jackson's administrative assistant and so that position was a stepping stone to higher service. Would Perle be even Secretary of Defense under Jackson?
 
Firstly, Jackson was not a neoconservative, at least as far as the modern term is concerned. He supported an aggressive foreign policy, but coupled with a domestic support of the welfare state and New Deal policies and all that Liberal stuff. In layman's terms, he was a Hawk Democrat or "Defense Democrat".

Secondly, on Iran, a rescue operation was attempted by Carter in the OTL. It went very badly. If memory serves, it was derailed because the helicopters weren't designed for the desert and those little grains of sand played havoc. Multiply that by however many tanks and planes and helicopters would see action in a full blown war, and things begin to get messy. And you won't get a war out of this. America's still reeling from Vietnam.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Firstly, Jackson was not a neoconservative, at least as far as the modern term is concerned. He supported an aggressive foreign policy, but coupled with a domestic support of the welfare state and New Deal policies and all that Liberal stuff. In layman's terms, he was a Hawk Democrat or "Defense Democrat".

Secondly, on Iran, a rescue operation was attempted by Carter in the OTL. It went very badly. If memory serves, it was derailed because the helicopters weren't designed for the desert and those little grains of sand played havoc. Multiply that by however many tanks and planes and helicopters would see action in a full blown war, and things begin to get messy. And you won't get a war out of this. America's still reeling from Vietnam.
Perhaps Jackson would do to Iran what Reagan did to Libya in '86.
 
He'll handle it the same way he handled the KAL 007 shootdown: Heart attack and death.

If the shock and stress he experienced only as a senator over the Soviet destruction of the Korean airliner triggered the heart attack that killed him, what the shock and stress of dealing with the hostage crisis as president, a known man-killing job, do to him?
 
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