Kopple revisits heroic, failed hostage rescue in ‘Desert One’
“Desert One” is Barbara Kopple’s bird’s-eye account of a legendary rescue mission that went horribly wrong.
When the 1980 Iranian Revolution overthrew the U.S.-supported Shah of Iran, the American Embassy in Tehran was raided and 52 Americans seized and held hostage.
The Oscar-winning “Argo” (2012) told the amazing story of how six embassy employees who escaped were eventually smuggled to safety.
“Desert One” tells another story, said Kopple, a twotime Academy Award winner. “It’s a story of heroism, a reminder of the horrors of war and a look really at the roots of conflict with the U.S. and Iranians.”
Revolutionary Iran’s religious leader Khomeni was never going to negotiate with President Jimmy Carter, “Because he wanted to put the Shah back,” Kopple, 74, said.
“Carter just wanted to get the hostages back safely as a humanitarian proposition. Everything was rebuffed.”
That’s why the daring rescue plan was hatched. On April 24,1980, Special Forces troops, all volunteers, landed outside Tehran in the dead of night. They were to drive to the embassy, extradite the hostages and fly out.
Nothing went as planned. “Here were guys willing to give up their lives to save 52 American hostages,” Kopple said.
We hear, for the first time ever, the phone calls from the desert to President Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale. We learn, exactly as they did, of the horrors unfolding with loss of lives, equipment and any hope of hostage rescue.
“For me,” Kopple said, “it’s watching history unfold that’s never before been seen. Here it was, the secret mission — no one was allowed to use radios and the only reports were to Mondale and Carter.”
She interviewed Carter and Mondale. Embassy hostages recall how they learned about the rescue attempt — from an Iranian revolutionary’s paper.
One hostage’s mother was able somehow to fly to Tehran to see her soldier son. We hear him say, “My blindfold was taken off, then my handcuffs and they walked me into a room and here comes Mom!”
Kopple also was able, via an Iranian film crew (“just smart, wonderful women”), to find eyewitnesses to the operation, notably an 11year-old boy who was on a bus the Special Forces stopped.
“He wanted to live,” Kopple said, “because then he could go back and tell his classmates what happened.”