US foreign policy and the Iran hostage crisis / David Patrick Houghton.

1. Jimmy Carter and the tragedy of foreign policy --2. Locating the argument: a review of the existing literature --3. The origins of the crisis --4. The waiting game --5. Days of decision: the hostage rescue mission --6. Hostages to history --7. Some alternative explanations: non-analogical accounts of the Iran decision-making --8. Conclusion.

"Why did a handful of Iranian students seize the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979? Why did most members of the US government initially believe that the incident would be over quickly? Why did the Carter administration then decide to launch a rescue mission, and why did it fail so spectacularly?

US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis examines these puzzles and others, using an analogical reasoning approach to decision-making, a theoretical perspective which highlights the role played by historical analogies in the genesis of foreign policy decisions. Twenty years after the failure of the hostage rescue operation, Houghton uses interviews with key decision-makers on both sides to reconsider these events - events which continue to poison relations between the two states.

The book will be of interest to students and scholars of foreign policy analysis and international relations."--BOOK JACKET.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-241) and index.