The 1979 Iranian Revolution was one of the most stinging US setbacks of the Cold War era. 

A longtime ally that the United States depended on as a pillar of regional security, the Shah, gave way to a theocratic regime based on hostility to America. 

The revolutionaries stormed the US embassy and seized our diplomatic personnel in November 1979.

If that wasn’t enough of a national embarrassment, a dramatic rescue attempt by the US military in April 1980 ended in abject failure at a staging area in Iran dubbed Desert One. 

As the Islamic Republic totters on the precipice, struggling to put down country-wide protests that are more threatening than any it has ever faced, it’s possible to imagine that we could be about to experience a bookend, from 1979 to 2026. 

The first Iranian revolution came in........

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