{"id":9372,"date":"2021-11-29T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9372"},"modified":"2021-11-28T14:32:15","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T19:32:15","slug":"appointment-in-tehran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9372","title":{"rendered":"Appointment in Tehran"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By James Stejskal – If like me you remember the 1979 episode when radical Iranian students seized the US embassy in Tehran and took more than 50 Americans hostage, you\u2019ll read James Stejskal\u2019s riveting new thriller with an increasing sense of foreboding. That\u2019s especially if you also recall that the US military launched a rescue mission that came to a disastrous end in the desert south of Tehran. Ultimately, the American hostages\u2014many of them diplomats\u2014were held for 444 days, until the inauguration of a new American president, Ronald Reagan. (The rescue of several Americans who escaped the embassy invasion and hid in the Canadian embassy was the subject of the highly entertaining 2012 film, Argo<\/a><\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that Stejskal\u2019s characters are smart and skilled Special Forces men, members of Delta Force, I was interested in how he\u2019d handle the botched rescue. No revisionist history here. His description is an accurate picture of how it happened, and, perhaps more important, why <\/em>it happened: an overly complex strategy, contingency planning failures, and sheer bad luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As real events simmer in the story\u2019s background, Stejskal\u2019s characters, led by Master Sergeant Kim Beck and Staff Sergeant Paul Stavros, have a lot of work to do. First, they undergo specific and intensive training in skills likely necessary for the rescue attempt: close quarter battle marksmanship, casing a target location, working as a team following a target through the city without being detected. Fascinating. Naturally, these skills come into play before the story ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though the Delta team members are not part of the main rescue force headed for disaster in the desert, they have several critical jobs. They must make on-site assessments of the situation where Americans are being held (the embassy and the Iranian Foreign Minister\u2019s office). They must double-check the adequacy and security of sites and logistics for extracting the hostages. It\u2019s dangerous undercover work. Iran isn\u2019t just hostile, it would welcome the chance to make political hay out of the capture of American spies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s not all. An army intelligence operation has smuggled a tactical nuclear weapon into Iran to be used against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the Americans want their bomb back at all costs. A traitor within US European forces has told the Soviets about the weapon, and they want it too. While this part of the story is purely fictional, the accuracy with which Stejskal portrays real events adds to the credibility of the entire plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This then is the Delta Force mission: backstop the rescue efforts, extracting the diplomats held at the foreign minister\u2019s office, find that nuclear device, and move it out of the country. Any or all of this could go badly in so many ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like his previous thriller involving many of the same characters, A Question of Time<\/em>, this story is a pure adventure. It\u2019s as much a political thriller as a military one, and you become a frustrated observer of the way bureaucracies tie themselves up in knots. Stejskal is a former CIA officer and US Army Special Forces member who had assignments worldwide, which has helped him create a plausible and exciting story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order here from Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By James Stejskal – If like me you remember the 1979 episode when radical Iranian students seized the US embassy in Tehran and took more than 50 Americans hostage, you\u2019ll read James Stejskal\u2019s riveting new thriller with an increasing sense … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Appointment in Tehran - suspenseful, believable--an exciting thriller for you or someone one your holiday gift list! By James Stejskal","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[440,366,193,40,266,126,32],"tags":[1934,1935,1796,113],"class_list":["post-9372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-drama","category-espionage","category-fiction","category-history","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-appointment-in-tehran","tag-iran","tag-james-stejskal","tag-middle-east"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ra","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9374,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9372\/revisions\/9374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}