The Most Successful Failure: Operation Eagle Claw and the Birth of Modern Special Operations Forces

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the entire diplomatic staff hostage. While President Jimmy Carter initially pursued a diplomatic solution to the crisis, he authorized the military to begin planning a rescue mission.

Still, planners slowly assembled a team and formulated a plan to insert a raiding force directly into the U.S. embassy compound in Tehran and get the hostages out. But launch they did on April 24, 1980, on a mission dubbed Eagle C...