Blaming the military for failure to rescue the hostages in Tehran is lame even for kool aid drinkers. That mission had a very low chance of success. If it had gone forward, it is very likely they either would have all been killed, the hostages would have been killed, large numbers of Iranian "civilians" would have been killed or we would have had another Bay of Pigs debacle where Carter would have flinched when they needed air cover to extract and left them to be tortured and killed.
I doubt Delta Force was very enthusiastic about this plan. It's one thing to storm a plane on a runway at an airport you control. To go into the middle of Tehran, mount a firefight against entrenched defenders with superior numbers, then extract with a large number of civilians, well, let's just say I don't even recall that happening in the movies.
It was reported at the time that Carter's advisors were terrified about the possibility of civilian casualties. Cyrus Vance wanted to know why the Delta Force guys couldn't just shoot to wing the Republican Guards. Rather than send Delta Force on a suicide mission designed to rescue Carter's presidency, a more appropriate response would have been to give the ayotollah khomeini a date certain for their release, failing which we would declare war and proceed to level much of Tehran.
Carter's defenders will say that none of the hostages died. That is true, but a lot of other people have over the years by virtue of the Iranian government.
