WI: Soviet Embassy in Iran Stormed (1979)

Delta Force

Banned
Part of the group that met to discuss the storming of the American embassy in Iran advocated storming the Soviet embassy.

The next attempt to seize the American Embassy was planned for September 1979 by Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a student at the time. He consulted with the heads of the Islamic associations of Tehran's main universities, including the University of Tehran, Sharif University of Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology (Polytechnic of Tehran), and Iran University of Science and Technology. They named their group Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line.

Asgharzadeh later said there were five students at the first meeting, two of whom wanted to target the Soviet Embassy because the USSR was "a Marxist and anti-God regime". Two others, Mohsen Mirdamadi and Habibolah Bitaraf, supported Asgharzadeh's chosen target: the United States. "Our aim was to object against the American government by going to their embassy and occupying it for several hours," Asgharzadeh said. "Announcing our objections from within the occupied compound would carry our message to the world in a much more firm and effective way."[37] Mirdamadi told an interviewer, "We intended to detain the diplomats for a few days, maybe one week, but no more."[38] Masoumeh Ebtekar, the spokeswoman for the Iranian students during the crisis, said that those who rejected Asgharzadeh's plan did not participate in the subsequent events.[39]

What if the group had succeeded in having the Soviet embassy selected as the target to be stormed, or broken away to storm it on their own?
 
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