The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (128 page)

A
n Iranian antiship missile is launched during an exercise near the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has developed an unorthodox military force capable of inflicting significant damage to the U.S. Navy in the event of a new war in the Persian Gulf.
(Fars News Agency/Department of Defense)

B
etter days: President Jimmy Carter meets with America’s stalwart ally the shah of Iran at the White House in 1977.
(Carter Library)

A
merican diplomats and marines are paraded before the news media after pro-Khomeini students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, November 4, 1979.
(Associated Press)

P
resident Carter (
left
) confers with his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski (
center
), and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (
right
) near the White House Rose Garden. Carter’s advisers were deeply divided on how to respond to the Iranian Revolution with Brzezinski advocating for an Iranian military coup and Vance supporting a transition to democracy.
(Associated Press)

A
yatollah Ruhollah Khomeini waves to a massive, enthusiastic crowd shortly after his return to Iran from exile following the overthrow of the shah, February 1979.
(Getty Images)

M
arine general Paul X. Kelley (seen here as the marine corps commandant in 1986) commanded the first U.S. multiservice military command dedicated to the Middle East. Kelley pushed for a permanent American military command to defend the Persian Gulf, which was a controversial decision within the Pentagon.
(Department of Defense)

T
he battalion headquarters building for the marines in Beirut, Lebanon, in the spring of 1983. While the marines tried to remain neutral in the Lebanese civil war, the Reagan administration’s support for the Christian-dominated government made them targets of the Iranian-backed Shia militias.
(U.S. Marine Corps)

S
unday morning, October 23, 1983: a massive mushroom cloud rises above south Beirut after a suicide bomber rammed a truck packed with explosives into the marine battalion headquarters.
(U.S. Marine Corps)

A
ftermath: rescuers dig for survivors amid the rubble of the battalion headquarters in Beirut. The death toll of American servicemen was 241.
(U.S. Marine Corps)

P
resident Ronald Reagan (
left
) meets with his national security team to discuss retaliation after the bombing of the marines in Beirut.
Foreground
: Vice President George H. W. Bush;
seated to Reagan’s left:
Secretary of State George Shultz;
standing right:
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
(Reagan Library)

D
eputy National Security Adviser John Poindexter urged retaliation for the bombing of the marine barracks in Lebanon. But despite its public pronouncements, the Reagan administration never responded militarily to the marines’ worst day since Iwo Jima in 1945. (
Associated Press)