Desert One

Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple tells the full, fraught tale of the covert mission to rescue the 52 American hostages held at the Embassy in Tehran in 1980. Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution had just seized power and they were demanding the return of the Shah, who had fled to the U.S., to stand trial. Instead, President Carter approved a high-risk mission to send a small team of skilled warriors to Iran to extricate the prisoners. Kopple gets remarkably candid interviews with all the participants: Carter himself, the men on the mission, the hostages, the widows of the fallen, as well as Iranian guards and witnesses. We even eavesdrop on the phone conversations between the President and the men on the ground as their mission encounters unexpected hazards.