The military operation on April 25, 1980, had proved a fiasco for Washington, at that time Jimmy Carter was president of the United States. Iran commemorates the event every year as a symbol of the failure of US plots against the Islamic Republic.
A sandstorm hit and brought down the group of US military
aircrafts in the Tabas Desert, killing eight American servicemen and resulting
in the failure of the mission. Inspections showed a helicopter crashed into a
C-130 Hercules transport plane as five other choppers were stranded in the
storm. The units involved in the operation were from the US Air Force, Army,
Navy and Marine Corps.
President Rouhani pointed to Washington’s repeated failures
against Iran over the past four decades, saying the historic US failure in
Tabas was a divine miracle. He also said, “The Tabas incident was a great
miracle from God which led to the failure of the Americans’ complicated
military plot”.
“Every day over the last 40 years, the U.S. officials have
been hatching a new plot against the Iranian people, but they have always
failed and will fail again,” he stressed.
During the takeover of the embassy, documents were
discovered that proved some of the American embassy staff had been working with
US intelligence agencies, meaning they were spies. Some 52 Americans were held
in Tehran for 444 days, but later released unharmed.
