Review: 'Desert One' tells of servicemen's courage, and a presidency's last gasp, during the Iran hostage crisis
The riveting documentary “Desert One” reminds us that history is a great teacher, if only we would listen to the lessons — which, in the case of the failed rescue mission of 52 American hostages in Iran in 1980, include lessons on the limits of military might and the importance of a president taking responsibility when things go wrong.
Before getting to the central event of the story, director Barbara Kopple takes us back to the 1970s, when the U.S.-supported regime of the Shah of Iran was starting to unravel. The Shah — put in power after a Western-backed coup of Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953 — was facing a rebellion, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and fled the country in early 1979.
Then a group of students supporting Khomeini overran the U.S. Embassy, and took 52 staffers, including diplomats and military men, hostage. President Jimmy Carter and his administration tried to negotiate a release of the hostages, but would not give in to the Iranian’s chief demand: Custody of the Shah, who was in New York receiving cancer treatment.
While negotiations dragged on, the Pentagon was making plans. The military’s Delta Force had come up with a rescue plan, an elaborate plot to fly Special Ops servicemen into Iran on C-130 transports, and transfer them to helicopters for a daring raid on the embassy in Tehran. The rendezvous point was a dry lakebed, code named Desert One.
The range of people Kopple and her team interview here is impressive. They include: Three of the hostages, at least three of the Iranians who held them captive, several members of the strike force on the rescue mission, military and CIA advisers (including Robert Gates, later Secretary of Defense), and President Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale.
The movie also corrals a wealth of news footage, from both Iran and the United States, and even the long-classified conversations between Carter and his generals when the mission was going drastically wrong.
The portrait painted by this new and archival material is of the country hamstrung not only by a foreign nation’s action but by the U.S. government’s miscalculations at what a small country might do to get revenge for a grudge that American leaders forgot existed. “Desert One” also tells a story of heroism, of servicemen who risked their lives — and, for eight of them, gave their lives — because they believed their leaders knew what they were doing. It also shows Carter as a man of integrity, taking personal responsibility for his administration’s failure.
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‘Desert One’
★★★1/2
Opening Friday, August 21, at the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex Legacy Crossing (Centerville) and Megaplex at The Junction (Ogden); and in the SLFS@Home and Utah Film Center virtual cinemas. Not rated, but probably R for gruesome images of war. Running time: 107 minutes.