Iran Has Joined The Party

While channel surfing, I saw that the Biden administration is trying to get Iran back to the table to re-re-negotiate their weapons development. It put me in mind of the hostage situation and their ultimate release some forty years ago. You know, the American hostages that they waited until the day Ronald Reagan was being inaugurated to release. For those of you not aware of that time in history, or how no matter what happens in the world, America somehow has its finger in it, let me elaborate.

Jimmy Carter was President. The world had survived an artificial oil shortage a few years before, and President Carter was very public about wanting to move America to energy independence. President Carter went on TV in a sweater, which he was ridiculed by some for. He pointed out that we Americans could actually help ourselves by conserving more. Carter promoted the development of solar technology on a wide scale and even had panels added to the roof of the White House. Carter implored us to manipulate our thermostats a couple of degrees in the Summer, and a couple of degrees in the Winter, to conserve electricity. He set new, very tough mileage standards for auto makers and reintroduced us to Daylight Savings Time.

Most of his conservation proposals were unpopular with the American people. We had always been told to extravagantly burn through any resource we had. Carter was a President who tried to tell us to do with less. Everything in our existence was predicated on using more and more fossil fuels. Obviously, the oil companies had absolutely no interest in twenty percent of the electricity in the U.S. coming from solar, as President Carter proposed. The proposals failed publicly, but played perfectly into the plans of the oil producing countries and their owners.

It is a classic Republican manipulation to foment dissent by making a Democrat President look weak. To that end, the U.S. Embassy in Iran was attacked and sixty Americans were taken hostage. The date was November 4, 1979, and the “crisis” lasted until Ronald Reagan’s inauguration on January 20, 1981. What a co-inky-dink.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the Iranians had plenty to be mad at us about. The CIA overturning a democratically elected leader to put the Shah in power, resulted in thousands of deaths and a huge loss of freedom for the Iranian people. Every Iranian knew who was responsible for their discomfort, the white devil. That said, taking an Embassy was a bold move without assurances that our military wouldn’t turn the desert to glass. Who gave those assurances? I’m guessing the same folks that timed the release of the hostages to Reagan’s first day on the job. It was a message written on stone tablets for all future tree hugging Presidents. “Thou shalt not mess with the oil bidness”.  

So now, forty years later, we’re trying to undo what a Republican did to a Democrat’s solution to one of the most burning (pun intended) issues of the Middle East. How do we keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons and then sharing them with every jihadist that can afford them? I’m hopeful that the Biden administration can “trump” the Trump solution.

It’s a shame the Hostage Crisis happened. Thank the Lord, it looks like we’re on a path of sanity now in our relations with Iran. The Hostage Crisis was a dark time for a very good President, who will always be remembered well for what he tried to do, not what was “done unto him”.

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