Book Review: Guests of the Ayatollah
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Of all the books reviewed in pages this volume, Mark Bowden’s Guests of the Ayatollah is undoubtedly in a league of its own. His latest work is an impressive account of what he describes as the U.S.’s “first battle” in the Global War on Terror (or Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, World War IV, or whatever you want to call it): the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. It took me a month to read through this formidable 600-page volume, complete with maps and photos, and—strangely enough—I’m actually glad it took me that long.
I am not suggesting that by taking a month to read it, I somehow know what it felt like to be held in captivity for four hundred and forty-four days. But Bowden’s plethora of anecdotes allows the reader to, in some sense, get to know each of the hostages in a way more characteristic of literature than of history, and having each of those stories build over a period of time only made me root for the hostages even more. Few non-fiction books excite me, but this one did. Bowden is a straightforward storyteller who doesn’t have time to use fancy artistic devices or flowery descriptions, which allows him to pack his book with rich detail.
Most of us have either read or seen the dramatization of his most famous book, Black Hawk Down, but Guests of the Ayatollah is not action-packed. Many of us already know the basic story from History Channel documentaries or paragraphs in history books. The traditional outline starts with the embassy takeover, covers the botched rescue attempt in which eight U.S. military personnel were killed, and concludes with the release of all the hostages just after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1980. Working within this basic framework, Bowden fills in plenty of gaps and brings to light facts I knew nothing about.
For example, conventional wisdom holds that President Carter did virtually nothing to secure the release of the hostages. This is categorically not true. His administration employed unprecedented persistence in negotiating with Iran. Bowden covers the various diplomatic overtures that were made by either side, and in fact, Carter’s team laid the basis for the agreement that eventually secured their release. Bowden reports that the only reason why the hostages were not released until the Reagan inauguration was because the hostage-takers didn’t want to give Carter the satisfaction. This is to say nothing of the rescue attempt, Operation Eagle Claw, which Bowden covers with impressive depth.
One thing I found especially surprising in the book was its humor. “Someday all of this will be funny,” one hostage wrote to his parents after just under one year of captivity, “God knows it’s already ridiculous.” Despite the tragic nature of the story and the brutal conditions under which the hostages were kept and sometimes tortured, I could not help but laugh out loud at some of the things these brave Americans did to stay sane. The Marines in particular were full of colorful language, of which Bowden fortunately censors only a fraction, and some of the interrogations endured by the hostages were based on premises so outrageous they are hilarious to read about. The hostages’ interrogators had a very poor sense of history. One, for example, did not know that the atomic bombing of Japan was preceded by a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Read this book to be inspired by these great Americans, who don’t believe they are the heroes the rest of us know them to be. For the most part, they refused to badmouth their country or surrender their dignity. We must ask ourselves whether we as a nation have this same courage today, what we would do under similar circumstances, and whether we have the national will to fight an enemy with whom we have been at war since before most of us here on this campus were born.
Book info: Bowden, Mark. Guests of the Ayatollah. Washington D.C.: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006. 704 pp
