Attack began. They were over the walls and soon the chain on the main gate was cut. This was filmed by a student. Here showing the area being overrun. The motor pool was behind the main gate to the embassy compound. To their right was the chancellory. The operational hub of the embassy that housed the Sensitive Communications systems. The heavy front doors of the chancellory had been bolted shut. Inside were 45 americans and plus iranian staff and some visitors. The marine guards inside fired tear gas to buy time. When it was realized help wasnt coming, one of the chancellory Security Officers went outside to try to persuade the students to leave. He was immediately captured. The besieged staff retreated floor by floor. One american, john limbert, who spoke farsi went out to try to save the life. He was immediately blindfolded and threatened with death. The americans surrendered. Just a portion of a canadian documentary which will be seen on cspan3s American History tv later on today. We want to welcome Stuart Eizenstat, former Senior Adviser to jimmy carter. His new book, president carter the white house years. Thank you for being with us. Steve, thank you for having me. John limbert, his book negotiating with iran wrestling the ghosts of history. We want to welcome you as well. We saw a portion of you in the documentary. Explain what happened as left the embassy, went outside and then taken hostage. Well, steve, first of all, thank you for having the program. As they mentioned in the documentary, those responsible for our safety that was the host the host government, the iranian government was very clear. They were not going to do it they were not going to do anything or could not do anything. When i called over there, i reached the secretary and i think the Prime Ministers Office and the first thing she said to me was what about those passwords we sent over for the visas, are the visas ready . Thats all they worried about. We were on our own. Going out to talk to the crowd was in retrospect was not a smart thing to do it was in my Foreign Service career one of the least successful negotiations that i had. But we didnt have a lot of choices. I mean, the priority was to make sure no one got hurt. Because if somebody did, if there had been bloodshed and i take my hat off to our marines here, to our Marine Security guard here, they had started shooting or somebody had started shooting things would have ended very differently and i probably wouldnt have been here today. Stuart eizenstat, lets take a step back. The hostage crisis began in 1979 but the roots of it really stem back many months and years before that. You were inside the Carter White House as this all unfolded. How did we reach this point in november of 1979. Well, steve, you have to go back to 1953 when a popperly popularly elected president mosadegh was elected and he was deposed by the mi6 because he was going to nationalize the oil industry and this young shah was put back on his fathers throne. From that time through 1979, the shah was our man in the middle east. He was our principal ally, republican and democratic president s gave him an open shopping list. By the time we had come into Office Almost the 11. 5 billionf it went to iran and he had some of the most sophisticated planes and arms, and he was a bulwark against the cold war and we had a cia station there at the height of the war, and he was also the principle supplier of oil, and he was suave, debonair, and he seemed impregnable, and nobody would have foreseen that what we saw occurring here in november of 1979 would have occurred except for when the shah was forced to leave and when he was, there was an earlier effort to get into the embassy of february of 1979 which they will remember, and in that instance i told khomeini the leader of the radical revolution that the Prime Minister and yazdi to intervene and take the students out of the embassy, and so this is a repeat later in the same year, and the circumstances had dramatically changed by then, but you have to go back to 1953 to understand the feeling in iran that the shah had sort of been imposed on in their country, and one last point, you cant say that the shah was sort of a typical autocrat. He was autocratic, and he had a tough security Security System that went after the opposition and he was a reformer in many ways and he had a white revolution in many ways, and to come with the red revolution of communists and empowered the women and tried to reform the land system and in the sense, he got in front of a very fundamentalist, conservative society. Of course, he was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1970s and in a oral history that you put together in 2006, you wrote and said the following, i was not privy to the exchanges that went on before the shah was admitted to the u. S. Because of his cancer, but what i have seen since in various documents made public is that bruce lengen was clear. He said if you do this, you are putting all of us in danger, and then jimmy carter against his better judgment decided to let the shah come in, and along with his chief of staff and press secretary jody powell said, quote, look, if i do this, what are you all going to advice us to do when the people have run and the embassy is taken over as hostages . President jimmy carter was a smart man and he foresaw what was going to happen. He did not want to admit the shah. And as you mentioned bruce lengen, the chief admission, he has warned him that it would have serious consequences, including the loss of the embassy. So someone around october 20th when they made the decision, and the administration had made the decision to admit him for medical treatment, we were essentially informed and the message to us you are expendable. You are out there. Good luck. Do the best you can. And why not . That is a good question. When i used to teach at the naval academy, my students would ask that same question, because it seemed so obvious to them. I have asked people within the administration and including ambassador eizenstat and others that as i can piece the events together, it was never discuss and perhaps the reason was cold war calculations. That it sounds strange saying this now, but iran was a key piece in the cold war game with the soviet, and the centerpiece of our policy, and since 1940s was to keep the soviets out of iran. So, and in fact, the coupe of 1953 coupe that was just mentioned, that was just mentioned was justified in here in washington as an anticommunist step that most would not, and would not be able to resist communist influence, and so at that point, the administration looked at it and they said, well, if we leave, we are abandoning 30 years of american policy, resistance to the soviets and simply saying to the soviets, okay, we are gone. Here is iran for you, and we are turning over a iran to our enemies. So, i think that the problem was that the administration perhaps thought that it could have the cake and eat it, too. We can admit the shah and we can preserve this foothold in iran with its antisoviet goals. Is that a Fair Assessment . It is. And in my book, i am very candid about the mistakes, and steve, this is the single worst intelligence failure in American History before or since in my opinion, and the cia which had reinstalled the shah in 1953 and who was our key ally in the region did not know that for five years he was secretly getting Cancer Treatment for incurable lymphoma, and they did not realize that the Domestic Support rested on quick sand and they did not appreciate that the ayatollah that was living in exile and the cassettes he was sending back was stirring a domestic revolution, and they did not understand the politics of iran and it is unacceptable intelligence failure, and in my book, the head of the cia did apologize and say that they did not give the president the intelligence that he needed and why didnt they withdraw and it is because in february when the first assault was made against the embassy, it wu repu, was repulsed. And so there was not an appreciation of the underlying conflict of the pro democracy nationalists and the fundamentalists, and so what khomeini did, steve, is that he used john and the hostages as political pawns to solidify his support and push out the democratic nationalists. Bazergan and yazdi resigned after, because of the breach to all of the international proposals, and why didnt we in february say okay, and we have one of these, and lets take everybody out. Well, we did send the embassy out, and 1,000 people on the staff, and bruce lengen and the ambassador got it down 70, and he reinforced the gates, and he put more security in, but attend of the day, we had so many assets in iran, planes, spare parts and cia opposition to the soviet union and the cold war, and since they had once repulsed students, the feeling was that it would happen a second time. And in the cold war calculation, we did not want to turn iran over to the soviet union. We, by the way, we have a poll on twitter, and you can follow us on cspan, and for this particular program cspan history, and the question is was the iranian hos kaj ctage crisi main reason that president carter was defeated in 1980. Wi we will have more of the results of the poll later. So you were held hostage for just over a year, and where were you held and what was it like . It was not pleasant. On the other hand, we all survived it. All of us came out, and we all survived which is a great tribute to president carter and his patriots, because he was determined that we would stay alive. It did not necessarily have to happen that way. It could have gone in a different direction, and it could have gone very badly. The iranians, and still many of themrepeated narrative that we were treated well and guests in a hotel, and this is absolutely nonsense. In the 14 months that i was there, i was nine months in solitary, threatened many times, and they arranged mock executions for us, and they isolated us and cut us off from the news and information, and we were held in incommunicado, and they attempted to convince us that we had been forgotten and very little communication with the family outside, and in a brief, we were not well treated. Part of the time we were in teheran, and part of the time after the failed rescue mission in april, we were scatter around the country, and we were in a prison downtown teheran and easy to hear the iraqi planes at that point attacking teheran at that period. And we were held in various places around the city until we were released in early january, and our plane no doubt took off just 15 or 20 minutes after president carter left office. We will get to that point later in the program, but i wanted to follow up with that you had met with khomeini, the head of iran, and what was he like back then. That that was a very stra meeting. He was at the time the secondranked cleric, and not seni senior, but my age, and maybe a few years older, and he was the friday prayer leader, and that is a major position, but we fell into a very host and guest interaction. I didnt use bad language and it was tempting to do so, but i didnt. My message to him was, sir, i know that in your chuulture howo treat a guest. You treat a guest in a certain way. I treated him as a guest in my space. I asked him to sit down. I offered him whatever i had, and if i had anything to eat or drink, i offered him that. And my message to him was i know how the treat a guest. You do not. Yo your, and what has happened here is shameful and disgraceful and violates every tenet of not just religious law or international law, but the deepest principles rooted in your culture. I did it, and the iranians have an expression that you cut off someones head with cotton. That was my purpose. If i may add something to johns very moving account. And something that he wouldnt have known at the time. President carter decided not to use military action early on, because he chose instead diplomacy, but he passed a very clear message through the swiss, the germans and others that if one hair on the head of any of our hostages, and any torture or show trials in which they were forced to quote, unquote force to admit some guilt, there would be immediate military action, and so there was none so john and his colleagues were mistreated. The absence of the show trial came as a result of the clear repeated message of president carter, that military action would occur if those untorrid actions occurred. Joining us for the conversation is Stuart Eizenstat who served as the policy adviser for jimmy carter and now the author of a book the carter years. And also joining us is stuart john limbert who was held hostage in those 44 days. With we go to milwaukee. Caller mr. Limbert, i am sad of what happened with you in iran, and it is a sad part of the history of the u. S. And iranian relations. It is wide known that jimmy carters presidency is responsible for the downfall of the shahs regime, and brzezinski wanting to have a belt around the former soviet union, and turner and william sullivan, and the last ambassador in iran and the message to the shah that the president carter wants you the leave iran. So i wanted your opinion on the mistakes of the carter presidency, and the price that we have been paying for the last 40 years. Thank you for the call. I will have you take that call, mr. Eizenstat, and then get your response. I am can dadid in my book ab the mistakes that the Carter Administration made, and the intelligence and the muddled messages because of National Security adviser vance and rogue adviser brzezinski, and it is totally unfair to suggest that jimmy carter lost iran. The shah lost iran by losing the support of his own people, and as a result, we have the situation that we have today. So, it is no more fair to say that jimmy carter lost iran than it would be to say that Dwight Eisenhower as president lost cuba when we had a castro revolution 90 miles from the shore or that president obama was apart from the departure and 7,000 miles away, you cant do, and the only way that the shah could have been saved would have been massive use of the military force of the shah which he in himself in his own memoir would have said that a monarch cannot shed the blood of his own countrymen to share the thrown or a clear message from the Carter Administration that the shah should use such force, and there is clearly a muddled message in that respect, and again, the bottom line is that the shah lost iran and not jimmy carter. There is a picture in the book from september of 1977, and the south lawn of the white house, and there is tear gas that was in the air, and you can see that the shah is wiping his eyes, and explain this photograph. The first state visit that the shah made in the Carter Administration was in november of 1977. And in the outdoor welcoming ceremony there were demonstrations across the south lawn of the white house in the park by iranian students, and they were as it turned out radical students to disburse the crowd, the National Park service used tear gas and the wind blew it into the face of the shah and the president and causing them to tear up. It is the first sign that anybody had that the shah might be in trouble. And may i also say again to the viewer, that time and time again, when the demonstrations occurred, and in 1977 and 1978, and in 1979, the president consistently supported the shah. He wanted to even fire our ambassador sullivan for suggesting that we reach tout khomeini over the objection of the assistant secretary of state, and carter ordered tear gas and other supplies for the shah to put down the demonstration. And so he constantly and consistently backed the shah, but the shah lost support of the military which was his real bulwark. And what your viewer said is common and powerful, very powerful narrative. Many of my iranian friends believe that the shahs fall was arranged by president carter. I agree with him that i dont agree with that. I would say to your iranian viewer as the phrase we did it to ourselves. We did it to ourself, because what you had is the middleclass people, and the middleclass secular people teachers, doctors, professionals, lawyers, all out there marching behind the banner of Ayatollah Khomeini and calling for the Islamic Republic without knowing what an Islamic Republic would bring them. President carter, afterall, he had gone to iran in late december and early january in 1978, and 1977, 1978, and made this effusive speech, toast at a dinner there which he spoke about iran being a island of stability in a turbulent region. Well, a year later, the shah was gone, and iran was in chaos. If i might make one more comment on this from the shahs point of view, and the shah believed this, and he believed exactly what the viewer said, and he believed for some reason that president carter and other western leaders had decided to get rid of him for reasons that he didnt know. Because they were super powers, and they could do whatever they wanted, and they didnt have to tell him. And so from his point of view, looking at it from his point of view, when he got in trouble in 1978, president carter would not as he went to president carter and said what should i do, and president carters response was that it is his country and he is the king. I cant tell him what to do which is quite correct. But from the shahs point of view, the 30 for 30 years, american president s had told him what to do, and so looking a it from his point of view, and he said, well, president carter has abandoned me, cut me off and he has thrown me under the bus. And we are joined from damascus, maryland, go ahead, please. Caller i have a quick question, because i have to leave for church in three minutes here, but i am wondering how the gentlemen feel about the because iran and russia are align and this historic since the khomeini came to power, how did they feel about the fact that President Trump has given away the country of syria to russians and iran . Thank you for the question, joanna. Can you put that in perspective . Yes. Iran is a factor as well, because iran is not only the worlds worst supporter of terrorism, and hamas and hezbollah and the houthis in syria, but iran is trying to build a military base of miss