Iran Hostage Crisis Analysis

Rising tensions in the Middle East lead to perhaps the most infamous event during President Jimmy Carter’s administration: the Iran Hostage Crisis. During November of 1979, Iranian university students with growing anti-United States sentiment stormed the United States embassy in Tehran, capturing and holding 60 Americans hostage for 444 days. Though Carter issued a risky military operation with intent to send an elite rescue team into the compound in April of 1980 (often referred to as Operation Eagle Claw), the mission failed and resulted in the death of eight American servicemen when sandstorms compromised helicopters, resulting in one of the helicopters to crash into another aircraft during take-off. The incident proved disastrous for Carter

with the failure of his administration to come to an effective solution, which some speculate cost him a second term. The hostages were released in January of 1981, just hours after President Reagan’s inaugural speech. Often overlooked by many history texts, however, is the escape of six Americans with the aid of the Canadian government and Canadian ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor. Canadian personnel developed a plan to get the escaped hostages out of Iran, and in doing so, risked their lives. The Canadian Caper, written by Jean Pelletier and Claude Adams and published months after the return of the six Americans, provides an in-depth report of the daring rescue mission successfully executed, using real-life accounts of the six Americans and involved Canadian personnel, exhibiting the importance and heroism of the Canadian government during the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Authors Jean Pelletier and and Claude Adams crafted a detailed account of the crisis from interviews and input with many people who were involved, on the Canadian and American side, including Canadian Ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor and his wife, along with multiple employees of the Canadian Foreign Ministry, Canadian Parliament, and the United States State Department, who all contributed to give accurate and first-hand information about the ordeal. Jean Pelletier himself was directly involved with the hostage crisis- born in Montreal, he grew up to be a reporter for the Montreal newspaper La Presse, bouncing around until he found himself the sole Washington correspondent for the company. He was the first reporter to discover the escaped hostages story, but, with pressure from both the American and Canadian governments, did not publish the story until after the six Americans had returned home in order to secure both the Canadian Embassy’s and American’s safety. He will be awarded the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award in June of 2017 in recognition of his remarkable career as a journalist, reporter, editor, and producer in both print and broadcast. Claude Adams, while with not as much of a link with the crisis, was born in West Germany and emigrated to Canada while he was young. He has worked internationally for a number of newspapers, and began television with Global Television Network in Toronto. Both Pelletier and Adams provide a news-literate background with the ability to construct an accurate and credible play by play of the events apart of the crisis.
In short, six Americans, Robert Anders, Henry Schatz, Cora and Mark Lijek, and Joseph and Kathleen Stafford all escaped from the American Embassy during the invasion of the Iranian students. Anti-American and Western sentiment had grown within Iran under the Ayatollah Khomeini, who despised American culture. They soon were taken into the Canadian Embassy once word of the six had reached Ken Taylor, and were divided up between the Ambassador and Canadian Immigration officer Sheardown, both diplomats taking a part of the six into their Tehran homes. Patricia Taylor and Zena Sheardown, wives of the two, also played large rolls in the situation, opening their homes and risking their safety to house the undiscovered Americans, making sure they felt as welcome and safe as possible while they waited on their government 6,000 miles away to create a plan to return the Americans home. Eventually, action was taken after Jean Pelletier had sniffed out the story, and while promising discretion, created more pressure on the American and Canadian governments to come to a conclusion. Taylor worked with the then Secretary of State for External Affairs, Flora MacDonald and Canadian Prime Minister, Joe Clark, who decided to smuggle the Americans out by providing them with Canadian passports and other legal documents, posing them as Canadian business people working for an oil company. The six were even trained to sound Canadian prior to their departure, aided by CIA agent Tony Mendez, who flew to Tehran to assist with the excursion. The entire process went about as smooth as possible, aside from technical issues with the SwissAir flight the group was supposed to be boarding, delaying their departure. Throughout the book, the story changes location from Ottawa, Washington D.C., and Tehran, allowing the reader to grasp at the politics and decision making during the crisis on the homefront.
To support their argument that the Canadians had an important role in the Iranian Hostage Crisis, authors Pelletier and Adams strategically use pathos, ethos, and logos to show the reader the heroism of the Canadian diplomats and government workers who worked towards the solution to the problem. Taylor and Officer Sheardown and their wives opened their homes to the six and took good care of them, celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with the group to try to ease their stay and relieve them of their boredom, as they were essentially on house arrest during their time in hiding in order to preserve theirs and the Canadians safety. Pelletier and Adams include a section on the Christmas they shared in Tehran, and the attempts of the Canadians to try to create as worry-free and genuine Christmas as they could given the situation:
“Zena pulled off the tape, unwrapped the bundle, and saw a folded-up scatter rug.

“Oh, Lee, that’s gorg-omigod.” The design on the rug was a full face of the Ayatollah Khomeini! There was an explosion of laughter from everyone in the room” (192).
Another rhetorical device the authors used to develop a genuine piece was the use of humor, which goes hand in hand with pathos. Actual, humorous events that their interviewees shared were included in the book in an attempt to show the humanitarian side of the crisis and the efforts on both the Canadian and American sides, home and abroad, to keep emotions under control during a very strenuous time of both country’s histories, as well as to give the story more of a reality feeling rather than strictly political.
Ethos and logos were often intertwined during the dook, as the two were present for nearly the entirety of it. The Canadian decision to hold the six Americans goes with the ethics of the situation, as described in the story after the escaped six were brought to the attention of Ken

Taylor:
“It was quick, the decision. There was no question of turning the Americans away. The only question was: how to effect sanctuary?” (60).
Pelletier and Adams also describe the relations between Canada and Iran “Iran was a valued Canadian trade partner and the relationship was growing: $700 million in goods by 1977…” (62), along with other examples throughout the text that demonstrate how, logically, secretly holding six Americans after the Iranian siege of the American Embassy may damage relations between Canada and Iran.

After the six Americans returned to the States and Pelletier’s article was released, Canada gained overwhelming popularity in the U.S., their parliament receiving thousands of letters in gratitude and public demonstrations of thanks throughout the U.S., although it is also stated in the book: “Nor did the Canadian Caper yield any tangible benefits for Canada in its relations with the United States” (234), then further explains the American government’s approval of a number of bills that hurt Canadian environment and trade balance- again, making their decision to help ethically correct even though it didn’t exactly make the most logical sense, displaying Canada as the selfless hero regardless of their own circumstances- presenting themes of bravery, selflessness, and

heroism.
While the book is very politically based, the authors do a job well done of incorporating other rhetorical devices to create the book into more of a story, rather than a transcript. As stated prior, humor played a large role in the book, as did the use of dialogue and perspective. The authors include dialogue throughout the book, using real conversation that happened between real people to create more of a narrative. The use of multiple perspectives, between Ottawa, Washington, and Tehran also allows for the reader to understand the whole story on all levels and layers of the situations.
Pelletier and Adams successfully maneuvered a complicated, tangled event into a story that accurately and interestingly tells the tale of the Canadian Caper, putting the domestic and abroad efforts to solve the hostage crisis into a cohesive plot that helps the reader understand the many moving parts of the situation. The book itself has been used as the basis of a 1980s TV movie, The Escape from Iran: The Canadian Caper, which follows closely with the book, using all three of Ottawa’s, Washington’s, and Tehran’s perspectives. The film Argo, released in 2012 and won multiple Academy Awards, also is a film representation of the story of the six escaped Americans, but does not accurately reflect the Canadian involvement and events that took place. The Canadian Caper offers the correct sequence of events and gives the reader a new perspective on the intricacy within governments and their decision making, as well as recognizing Canada as a leading global power- something that is often overlooked by many people. As a permanent mark in history, Pelletier’s and Adam’s book sets the record straight and tells the story of an astonishing international crisis and the brainpower and guts of the Canadian government.