Do you think Jimmy Carter handled the Iran/hostage situation properly?
What could he have done better?
by 
dalcocono
ANSWERS: 6
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Clearly not. The extraction attempt was a fiasco. And that is one of the major reasons Carter lost the next election (the other was the "energy crisis"). Of course, Reagan's dealings with Iran were even more deplorable.
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We'll never know since the Reagan campaign decided before the election to take the low road and undercut Carter's chances of reelection by promising the Iranians under the table that they would cut a better deal with them if Reagan was elected than Carter would. This deal turned out to be the illegal sales of arms to Iran that became the Iran Contra scandal. It's unlikely Carter would have ever done anything illegal under U.S. or international law to free the hostages.
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He did the best he could under the circumstances.
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He did the best he could under the circumstances.
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I think the big reason Carter lost the election to Reagan was his appearance as a weak leader who couldn't even control his own family let alone the Hostage crisis. Add to the 12 percent inflation and you have the recipe for disaster.
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No. Security should have been bolstered at the embassy. If you think that's unreasonable, because Carter could not have known what was about to happen, well, a little more than six months earlier, the same embassy was stormed and one hostage was taken. That's plenty of time to make preparations, but certainly not enough time to forget about it. But the worst shortcoming was the lack of a prompt and clear response from Carter to Iran. The military catastrophe was the most visible part of the whole crisis, but that was probably not Carter's fault, since he was only involved at the highest level, and the mishaps mostly seemed to point at poor mission planning and poor communications between mission planners and the soldiers.
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