>
> The claim that the U.S. pushed Saddam Hussein into attacking Iran in
> the fall of 1980 has always seemed to me to be highly unlikely, and
> advanced only by those totally deaf to political realities. Jimmy
> Carter was desperate to get the hostages out of the embassy. Jimmy
> Carter and Cyrus Vance were smart enough to know that ratcheting-down
Cyrus Vance was gone from State in the spring of '80, so regardless of how smart he was, he had nothing to do with any action taken in fall...
> the tension was the best way to accomplish this--that unless they
> were willing to threaten an unlimited U.S. war against Iran, their
> chances of getting hostages back were better the less threatened the
> mullahs and the students felt. The Iraqi attack was--in Carter's and
> Vance's estimation--an action that further radicalized the Iranian
> Revolution, and reduced chances for hostage release.
>
> After all, were the other European monarchs trying to do Louis XVI a
> favor when they declared war on the Convention?
>
> (Brzezinski, however, may well have been freelancing on his own, and
> may well have had a different policy than that of Carter...)
>
>
>
> Brad DeLong
>
-- no Onan