Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

dollars in one year. Thus when the President decided to freeze Iranian assets and brought trade with that
country close to a halt it was not without cost to the United States.
Finally, out of anger and frustration, Carter decided to take desperate measures to save the
hostages. He sent a commando unit to rescue the Americans. Six C-130 transport planes with ninety
commandos on board were sent to a remote airstrip in Iran’s Dasht-e Kavir desert. There were supposed
to have been eight helicopters used in the assault on the embassy. Only six helicopters arrived at the air
field and one of them had trouble and could not be used. The mission could not be carried out and it was
aborted. An aborted mission may not have caused a serious problem except one of the helicopters hit a
plane that was refueling. This caused explosions and fires that killed eight American servicemen and
burned four others. The rescuers did manage to get out of Iran. However, the charred bodies left behind
were put on display by the Iranian militants. President Carter’s attempt to rescue the hostages had failed.
While Carter was in the White House he kept a diary. He selected the entries that he thought were
the most important to compile a book. After some of the entries President Carter made notes. On January
23, 1980 he wrote about the State of the Union Speech. He said that the part of the speech that is now
known as the Carter Doctrine was the most essential component of the speech. In his notes about that entry in
his diary he said, “We could not afford to have the Soviets move into adjacent nations and, in effect, control
much of the oil supply in the Gulf region. The statement regarding the potential use of military force in the
Persian Gulf region became known as the Carter Doctrine because it implied the use of all our strength.”
One has to question if the statement President Carter made in the State of the Union Address
carried the weight that was intended. Carter’s statement clearly sent a message to the Iranians and also to
the Soviet Union. However, this may have been too little too late. Washington certainly knew about the
shah’s brutal behavior towards the Iranian people. There had been demonstrations against the shah in
Washington by thousands of Iranian students. They were shouting “Shah is a butcher.”
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