Persian Fire

I remember 1978, and we should too.

In 1978, I was a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. It was then, a year before the hostage crisis, that I caught the nasty edge of the Iranian contempt for this country.

It was the tear gas. The hatred of the Shah had come to roost here in the United States. Anti-Shah demonstrators were threatening him as he visited the White House. They were showing for the first time their contempt even for us here in our country.

Starting in the fall of the next year, they proved that contempt again and again. Trooping the fifty blindfolded American diplomats before world TV cameras, burning the American flag, and continually rubbing the humiliation in our faces.

It was if they were producing US television. Every weekday night, “America Held Hostage” played on our TV sets, insulting us right in our living rooms and sports bars. They hated us and wanted us to know it.

It’s back at us again, this deep-seated hatred for what we did in 1953 when the CIA overthrew their government and inserted the monarchy of the Shah.

It has been this way ever since 1979.

Did you recall how they kept those hostages until Jimmy Carter had left office, releasing them only after Ronald Reagan had taken the oath?

Expect the same persistent hatred this time around. It is consistent with our history, but more so. Remember how the Germans fought for two years after their terrible loss at Stalingrad. People say it was the allied bombing that did it. Remember Vietnam, where our relentless bombing merely kept North Vietnam and the Viet Cong more committed to our defeat?

Expect from Iran. They will bomb their neighbors, choke the Strait of Hormuz, whack back at Israel. Most frightening, they know us. They know what hurts us most, what angers Donald Trump most – oil, the market generally – and they will play nasty.