Cambridge University Press
0521801168 - US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
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US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
Why did a handful of Iranian students seize the American Embassy in
Tehran in November 1979? Why did most members of the US government initially believe that the incident would be over quickly? Why
did the Carter administration then decide to launch a rescue mission,
and why did it fail so spectacularly? US Foreign Policy and the Iran
Hostage Crisis examines these puzzles and others, using an analogical
reasoning approach to decision-making, a theoretical perspective
which highlights the role played by historical analogies in the genesis
of foreign policy decisions. Twenty years after the failure of the hostage rescue operation, Houghton uses interviews with key decisionmakers on both sides to reconsider these events – events which continue to poison relations between the two states. The book will be of
interest to students and scholars of foreign policy analysis and international relations.
DAVID PATRICK HOUGHTON is Lecturer in Government at the
University of Essex. He has published widely in the fields of foreign
policy decision-making, American foreign policy and International
Relations, with articles in journals such as British Journal of Political
Science, Political Psychology, Policy Sciences and Security Studies.
© Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge University Press
0521801168 - US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
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CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: 75
US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
Editorial Board
Steve Smith (Managing editor)
Thomas Biersteker Chris Brown Alex Danchev
Joseph Grieco John Groome Richard Higgott G. John Ikenberry
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe Steven Lamy Andrew Linklater
Michael Nicholson Ngaire Woods
Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of
Cambridge University Press and the British International Studies
Association (BISA). The series will include a wide range of material,
from undergraduate textbooks and surveys to research-based monographs and collaborative volumes. The aim of the series is to publish
the best new scholarship in International Studies from Europe, North
America and the rest of the world.
© Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge University Press
0521801168 - US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
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CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
75 David Houghton
US foreign policy and the Iran hostage crisis
74 Cecilia Albin
Justice and fairness in international negotiation
73 Martin Shaw
Theory of the global state
Globility as an unfinished revolution
72 Frank C. Zagare and D. Marc Kilgour
Perfect deterrence
71 Robert O’Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte and Marc Williams
Contesting global governance
Multilateral economic institutions and global social movements
70 Roland Bleiker
Popular dissent, human agency and global politics
69 Bill McSweeney
Security, identity and interests
A sociology of international relations
68 Molly Cochran
Normative theory in international relations
A pragmatic approach
67 Alexander Wendt
Social theory of international politics
66 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.)
The power of human rights
International norms and domestic change
65 Daniel W. Drezner
The sanctions paradox
Economic statecraft and international relations
64 Viva Ona Bartkus
The dynamic of secession
63 John A. Vasquez
The power of power politics
From classical realism to neotraditionalism
Series list continues after the Index
© Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge University Press
0521801168 - US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
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US Foreign Policy
and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
© Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge University Press
0521801168 - US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
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pub l is hed b y t he pre ss sy nd icat e of t he u ni ve rs it y of camb r idge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
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© Cambridge University Press 2001
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
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no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2001
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
Typeface 10/12.5pt Palatino System Poltype® [vn]
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
Houghton, David Patrick.
U.S. foreign policy and the Iran hostage crisis/David Patrick Houghton.
p. cm. – (Cambridge studies in international relations; 75)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 80116 8 – ISBN 0 521 80509 0 (pb)
1. Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979–1981. 2. United States – Foreign
relations – 1977–1981 – Decision making. 3. United States – Foreign
relations – Iran. 4. Iran – Foreign relations – United States. I. Title:
United States foreign policy and the Iran hostage crisis. II. Series.
E183.8.I55 H68 2001
955.05'42 – dc21 00-045453
ISBN 0 521 80116 8 hardback
ISBN 0 521 80509 0 paperback
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0521801168 - US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
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Contents
Preface
page ix
1 Jimmy Carter and the tragedy of foreign policy
2 Locating the argument: a review of the existing
literature
3 The origins of the crisis
4 The waiting game
5 Days of decision: the hostage rescue mission
6 Hostages to history
7 Some alternative explanations: non-analogical
accounts of the Iran decision-making
8 Conclusion
1
21
46
75
105
144
166
202
Appendix 1 Dramatis personae
Appendix 2 The major historical analogies used
Bibliography
Index
224
226
229
242
vii
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0521801168 - US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
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Preface
Like most books, this one owes several profound debts of gratitude. The
argument presented here – and my interest in analogical reasoning in
foreign policy analysis generally, the subject of this book – owes a great
deal to the work of Yuen Foong Khong. Reading Khong’s Analogies at
War, which is a study of how the Vietnam decision-makers reasoned
analogically about whether to escalate America’s involvement in that
disasterous war, got me thinking about other areas of American foreign
policy to which Khong’s theoretical insights might be applied, and the
book proved a constant source of guidance and inspiration. A similarly
formative influence was Richard Neustadt and Ernest May’s Thinking
in Time, whose title, I learned later on joining the faculty of the Department of Government at Essex, was provided by Anthony King. This
work also obviously owes an intellectual debt to a great many people
whose prior research in this and related areas has inspired my own
efforts. Apart from those already mentioned, Alexander George, Robert
Jervis, Ole Holsti and Yaacov Vertzberger in particular have all contributed powerful insights to the study of foreign policy decisionmaking and/or the investigation of the role that analogizing plays in the
policy-making process, and without their sterling work in these fields
this book would almost certainly never have been written.
I would also like to extend particular thanks to the individuals who
agreed to be interviewed in relation to this project, and to the staff of the
Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta, who were invariably friendly and
helped me find my way around the initially daunting presidential
library system. Former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was particularly
generous with his time, and talking to him in his law office in New York
City was a special honour since this, so he assured me, was the first
interview he had ever granted to an academic in relation to the Iran
ix
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0521801168 - US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis
David Patrick Houghton
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Preface
hostage crisis. We chatted for almost two hours about the hostage
situation, and our discussion ranged over many other foreign policy
topics as well, including his recent role in the attempt to reach a
negotiated settlement to the recent war in Bosnia. Former Director of
Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner was also especially helpful, as
was ex-National Security Council Adviser Gary Sick. The author would
also like to extend warmest thanks to Zbigniew Brzezinski, who also
graciously agreed to be interviewed and gave generously of his time.
Efforts were also made to contact former President Jimmy Carter,
former Defence Secretary Harold Brown, former White House Chief of
Staff Hamilton Jordan and former Assistant Secretary of State Harold
Saunders, all of whom either declined to be interviewed or failed to
respond to my request.
Three anonymous reviewers suggested numerous helpful changes to
the text of this book, and I owe them another debt of gratitude. I am
especially grateful to the reviewer who suggested that I contact Michael
Csaky of the British film company Antelope Productions, for instance,
since this turned out to have a major impact upon the development of
the argument which appears in Chapter 3. This was excellent advice.
Mr Csaky made a superlative documentary about the Iran hostage
crisis during the course of 1997 and 1998, and in doing so had accumulated a large stock of interview transcripts with Iranian and American
figures who played a major role in that crisis. Mr Csaky and his
assistant Katrina Chaloner kindly made many of these transcripts available to me, and their help has undoubtedly made this a much better
book than it would otherwise be. At Cambridge University Press, Steve
Smith and John Haslam were always helpful, and Sheila Kane’s firstrate copyediting greatly improved the book’s style and language.
The argument presented in Chapters 4 and 5 draws on an article I
published in the British Journal of Political Science in October 1996,
entitled ‘The Role of Analogical Reasoning in Novel Foreign Policy
Situations’. The anonymous reviewers of this piece were immensely
helpful in strengthening the argument set forward there, and many of
their insights have naturally been incorporated into this larger work.
Funding for the interview expenses associated with this project was
generously provided by Bert Rockman’s Colloquium on American
Politics and Society (CAPS) and by the Department of Political Science,
both at the University of Pittsburgh, where I was based as a Teaching
Fellow and Ph.D. student during most of the research I conducted for
this book. Another debt of gratitude is owed in particular to Brian
x
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David Patrick Houghton
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Ripley, who taught me practically all I know about cognition and
foreign policy while I was a student at Pittsburgh, and to Guy Peters,
who was kind enough to read some of the material included here in its
original form as part of a Ph.D. dissertation, as were Morris Ogul and
Phil Williams. My graduate student colleagues at Pittsburgh – notably
Paul Taggart and Tony Zito, who now teach at Sussex and Newcastle
respectively – were also invariably helpful.
Special thanks is also due of course to my numerous colleagues at the
University of Essex, where I am now based. The author would especially like to thank Anthony King, Hugh Ward, Neil Robinson and Joe
Foweraker for their incisive comments on an earlier version of Chapter
3 when it was presented at Essex’s Department of Government seminar
series. Joe was also kind enough to reduce my teaching duties during
the 1998 Autumn term, allowing me the time I needed to write much of
the text for this book. Albert Weale, who took over from Joe as Department Chair, did a similar thing in Autumn 1999 and was a constant
source of encouragement in the writing of this book.
One of my greatest regrets is that I never got the chance to interview
Richard Cottam in relation to this project. His office at Pittsburgh,
where he taught since the 1960s, was just down the corridor from the
carrel I occupied as a graduate student, but since he was suffering from
cancer at the time I was never able to talk to him. That was unfortunate
for me in several ways: Professor Cottam was not only an expert on Iran
and foreign policy decision-making, but was also – as discussed in
Chapter 4 – one of the American government’s main negotiating channels to Iran at one stage during the hostage crisis. He was also stationed
in the American embassy during the CIA’s 1953 coup. This book is
almost certainly all the poorer without the help and input he gave to
others throughout his career.
My greatest debt of gratitude, however, is owed to my wife Annabelle Conroy, my daughter Isabelle and my parents. While I was
writing much of this book, Annabelle was lecturing in the Government
Department at the London School of Economics, but had to bear a very
disproportionate share of the child minding duties while I wrote the
text of this book, cloistered in our study. There is a sense in which
Annabelle, Isabelle and Carlos were ‘hostages’ during the writing of
this book; I am glad to finally set them all free.
xi
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