This week, Wikileaks published over 500,000 US diplomatic cables from what the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, called the “momentous year” of 1979.

The publication marks the 6th anniversary of Wikileaks’ release in 2010 – in collaboration with the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El Pais – of classified cables sent from US Embassies around the world to the US State Department.

But whereas the 2010 release was a major media event offering the world secret details of US diplomacy, this release – the third installment of Wikileaks’ “Carter Cables” detailing the affairs of the 1977-1981 administration of US President Jimmy Carter – is primarily of historic interest.

Many of the documents involved have already been released released via US Freedom of Information Act requests and the US State Department’s systematic declassification review.

Even so, the collection contains more than 5000 documents about Iran, which offer insights into US thinking during the year of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

The Year of Blood

“In 1979, it seemed that the blood would never stop,” Assange writes in his press release. “Dozens of countries saw assassinations, coups, revolts, bombings, political kidnappings and wars of liberation.” The Iranian Revolution, he writes, “decisively changed the relationship between oil, militant Islam and the world… The Iranian hostage crisis would go on to fatally undermine Jimmy Carter's presidency and see the election of Ronald Reagan.”

Assange, following in the footsteps of modern historians, has identified 1979 as a signal year in modern history, or “‘year zero’ of our modern era, as he puts it.

Gary Sick, a Middle East specialist who served on the US National Security Council under Presidents Ford and Carter, and for a short time under Reagan, is no admirer of Wikileaks. But he agrees about that year’s global significance.

“I would certainly say that it was a momentous year, and a lot of the issues and problems that we have today were there in 1979,” he says. “You had the Iranian Revolution and you had the taking of the great mosque in Mecca. There was a lot going on in the Arab-Israel issue as well.”

The November 1979 insurgent attack on the authority of the Saudi royal family’s control of Islam’s holy sites, along with the Iranian Revolution and the March 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, seem now to represent a world in which uncompromising Islamist forces were ascendant, while Egyptian-style Third World nationalism – which proved capable of compromise with Israel – began to go out of fashion.

1979 – As It Unfolded

Wikileaks’ Iran-related cables from 1979 cover such major events as the Shah’s flight from Iran on January 16, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s return to Iran on February 1, the establishment of Iran as a theocracy by referendum on April 1, and the taking hostage of US diplomats on November 4.

On the day of the Shah’s rushed departure from Iran, a secret cable from Cairo described preparations for the Shah’s reception by President Anwar Sadat at Aswan Airport:

SINCE ASWAN AIRPORT IS ABOUT A HALF HOUR'S DRIVE FROM THE CITY ITSELF, EGYPTIANS ARE ANXIOUS TO KNOW AS ACCURATELY AS POSSIBLE SHAH'S ETA [estimated time of arrival] SO THAT APPROPRIATE WELCOMING CEREMONY CAN BE ARRANGED. HE ALSO NOTED EGYPTIAN AUTHORITIES ARE NOT ANXIOUS HAVE SADAT WAIT AT ASWAN AIRPORT FOR TOO LONG A TIME.

A February 1 cable described the scene of Khomeini’s arrival in Iran like this:

HUGE CROWDS LINED KHOMEINI'S ROUTE FROM THE AIRPORT TO THE MAIN CEMETERY, BUT THEY WERE GENERALLY ORDERLY AND THERE HAS BEEN NO VIOLENCE REPORTED AS YET. "ISLAMIC POLICE" PICKED UP THE MOTORCADE AT THE SHAHYAD MONUMENT WITH THE MILITARY, AS AGREED, FADING DISCREETLY INTO THE BACKGROUND.

An April 1 account of the referendum on Islamic rule predicted overwhelming Iranian support for a new theocracy in Iran:

IT APPEARS THAT THE VOTE WILL PROVE TO HAVE BEEN OVERWHELMINGLY IN FAVOR OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC. ONE TEHRAN POLLING STATION LATE LAST NIGHT REPORTED THAT OF THE NEARLY 2,000 VOTES CAST THERE ONLY SIX WERE NEGATIVE.

November 4 documents illustrate US reactions to the US Embassy siege that day in real time:

OUR RSO [Regional Security Officer] IN NEGOTIATIONS WITH APPARENT LEADER OF FORCE ATTACKING COMPOUND. THEIR PRIME DEMAND AT PRESENT SEEMS TO BE TO OCCUPY EMBASSY AS SYMBOLIC GESTURE. LEADER OCCUPYING FORCE INDICATED THAT THEY HAVE NO DESIRE TO CAUSE ANY HARM TO ANY GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES.

Many documents, however, cover more day-to day matters, such as efforts to locate and assist US citizens in Iran, and to assess worldwide media reactions to events in Iran.

Anything Scandalous?

Ever since its inception in 2006, Wikileaks has focused most of its anti-secrecy efforts on revealing US government documents. In the past election year, it has been accused of specifically targeting Hillary Clinton in an effort to undermine her campaign against now-President-Elect Donald Trump.

Back in 2010, Wikileaks’ release of still-classified US embassy cables revealed the urgency with which several of America’s Arab Gulf State allies – notably Bahrain and Saudi Arabia – wanted the US to launch military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, one document revealed, had asked the US to “cut the head off the snake.”

But so far, the “Carter Cables” have received little media coverage and are unlikely to produce major revelations.

“I probably will not look at them,” says Gary Sick, referring to the Wikileaks documents covering his time in the White House. “Basically, the Carter Administration didn't do anything embarrassing. They didn't do a lot of sneaky stuff behind the scenes. When Jimmy Carter said he wouldn't lie to the American public, he actually meant it. I've got nothing to hide in terms of the time I was there. I would be perfectly happy to have all of my memos and notes published. In that sense, Wikileaks has never disturbed me.”

Malcolm Byrne of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, a non-profit research project that publishes and analyzes US government documents, says Wikileaks’ focus on 1979 reflects the progression of the US National Archives in their review of State Department cable traffic.

Most US secrecy about Iran, he says, pertains to the events of 1953, when the CIA and the British intelligence agency MI6 took part in the overthrow of the popular nationalist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. “There’s a lot more available on 1979 than 1953, for sure,” Byrne says. “It’s not clear what fraction of the existing record this tranche represents, whereas we know from CIA statements that much of the record on the 1953 coup operation was destroyed.”

The events of 1979 are simply better-documented and less controversial from the US point of view. “There’s no indication the U.S. was involved in anything like the ’53 coup during the revolution 25 years later, so presumably there’s less to be worried about revealing. Having said that, it’s clear there’s a lot that’s still being withheld, since these are only State Department records, and they don’t include CIA or other agency files.”