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By early April Carter had lost patience with the frustrating process of trying to deal with Iran's changing leadership and the erratic Khomeini. He thought he had reached agreement for the Iran government to take control of the hostages from the more zealous militants, but Khomeini squelched any deal. As political pressure built up in the U.S. for more forceful action, Carter embarked on a very risky two-track course. Publicly, he pressured the Western European nations to join the U.S. in breaking diplomatic ties with Iran and in cutting off most trade, hinting none too subtly that he would otherwise take some kind of unspecified military action by mid-May. Most privately, Carter signaled his military commanders on April 11 to get the team ready to go. The public talk about a May deadline was designed in part to make a more immediate rescue strike seem most unlikely. Says a top State Department official: "To the extent that people were looking not at next week but at next month—and that includes everybody —the chances for success were increased and the chances of loss of life were decreased."
The imminence of the rescue raid apparently was one of Carter's motivations for announcing what then looked like an ill-advised travel ban on Americans to Iran, including the families of the hostages. He also urged U.S. journalists to reduce their presence in Iran.
Beyond the key operational military commanders, only a few high civilian officials knew the nature of the secret mission. They included Vice President Mondale, Brown, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, CIA Director Stansfield Turner and White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan. Not even Stuart Eizenstat, Carter's chief adviser on domestic policy, was told about the raid. In mid-April Carter summoned the team's leaders to the White House Situation Room and wished them well on their perilous mission.
Ironically, some members of the White House staff grew restive at all the public threats by Carter about taking military action against Iran—presumably in May. Last Tuesday Jordan called a meeting to hear their complaints. Speech Writer Hendrik Hertzberg said he could not shake "an uneasy feeling that we're slipping down a slippery slope toward a military confrontation." Eizenstat said he was worried about a disruption in world oil supplies if other Persian Gulf countries reacted to U.S. military moves by cutting oil shipments to the West. Insisted Jordan: "'The President has made no decision, not even a tentative one, to embark on such a course." When news of the dissension leaked out, Brzezinski was furious, terming such disclosures "a sickening business."
In fact, the innocent White House aides were protesting the wrong plans —and by accident helping the mission's cover story. At that very moment some of the rescue unit's pilots and crews were already in Egypt, ostensibly to take part in joint air transport training exercises with Egypt and Saudi Arabia—a handy disguise for what was to come.