No Iran crisis in 1979

Approaching the 30th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis, let's put a new TL...Suppose American embassy workers were not taken hostage in 1979.

This crisis really grabbed much of Carter's attention. Without this crisis, he would likely still lose to Reagan in 1980 but not as badly....
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Carter had more or less accepted the new government, and the Ayatollah had accepted having the US in Teheran. They were even beginning to approach each other about the pressing (for the Iranians) issue of spare parts for the F-14s.

The US really was willing to be friends with whatever government was in Iran, as long as the border radar posts peering into the Soviet Union were kept functioning and the Iranian Air Force kept going with it's overflights and tit-for-tat challenges of Soviet MiG-25s. These were important field tests of American equipment, and when the Revolution came, America lost alot of intelligence into the missile testing and strategic bomber basing that went on in the central USSR.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
In other words, if the hostage crisis hadn't happened the ayatollah and the US could have become uneasy allies.

Well, they wouldn't have been like the US and Canada, but they wouldn't have been like they are today, so Yes. They just would've been one more in a long line of countries we get along with out of necessity, kind of like Pakistan.
 
Actually really the only thing that really precipitated the hostage crisis and enmity with the US during the Islamic Revolution in Iran was the following:

"On October 22, 1979, at the request of David Rockefeller, President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States to undergo surgical treatment at the New York Hospital It was anticipated that his stay in the U.S. would be short; however, surgical complications ensued which required six weeks of confinement in the hospital before he recovered. His prolonged stay in the U.S. was extremely unpopular with the revolutionary movement in Iran, which still resented the United States' overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddeq and the years of support for the Shah's rule. The Iranian government demanded his return to Iran to stand trial but the U.S. government refused to turn him over" -- from a wikipedia article on the Shah.

If we'd have pretty much thrown the Shah under the bus, things might have gone very different. Basically Carter not sitting on his hands waiting and basically telling Brezinski to go fuck himself since Brezinski was pretty much wanting to go on a full scale invasion of Iran to re-install the Shah.We probably would have had a continuing relationship with Iran much like we do with the Saudis.

IIRC as a side note, once things got really torqued up there was some wavering on which embassy to take; Believe it or not, Ahmadenijad (who was one of the hostage takers at the time) was more for going after the USSR embassy than the US embassy. Interesting POD if they decided to take the USSR embassy instead of the US.
 
Presumably the Shah dying (of natural or other causes) before reaching the US is a possibility, and if that were the hostage taker's motive....
 
Another possibility would have been for the Shah to have turned power over to his son 6 months to a year earlier. There was the possibility that the Crown Prince could have rallied the Bazaar ( merchant class) and the President listen to his Secretary of Defense and CIA director and support the monarchy.

Carter made a lot of bad decisions. He would not have come closer to Reagan in the 1980 election because of his mishandling of the economy as well as Iran and other foreign policy disasters.
 
Presumably the Shah dying (of natural or other causes) before reaching the US is a possibility, and if that were the hostage taker's motive....

well, the Shah died while in the USA, and the students in the embassy changed their demands from return of the Shah to a big pile of money, essentially turning it into a kidnapping writ large. It's not inconceivable that the students would have stormed the embassy anyway, with money in mind...

I don't think the US and Iran would have become any kind of allies, uneasy or otherwise. The hostility of the Iranian people towards the US was deep at this time. They would have become as they did in OTL, a true third world nation, being allied neither with the west nor the communist states. Without the embassy kidnappings, Iran might have continued to be a seller of oil to the USA, and that would be about it...
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I don't think the US and Iran would have become any kind of allies, uneasy or otherwise. The hostility of the Iranian people towards the US was deep at this time. They would have become as they did in OTL, a true third world nation, being allied neither with the west nor the communist states. Without the embassy kidnappings, Iran might have continued to be a seller of oil to the USA, and that would be about it...

Well, it's in the definition of "allies." The Iranian government, especially in 1980, would have a lot of problems that only America was in a position to really help grease the wheels for.

And in 1979, prior to the hostage crisis but after the Revolution, the US was already trying to find ways to get the radar stations along the Soviet border back up and running in exchange for F-4 spare parts that the Iranians wanted.

Sure, we wouldn't be buddy's with them, but America's gotten in bed with a lot of dirtbags over the years.
 
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