When the Pentagon confirmed plans this week to deploy roughly 1,000 troops from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, it reopened a chapter on Iran that has lingered unfinished for nearly half a century. In 1979, as the Iranian Revolution toppled the Shah and militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, American war planners quietly prepared for a range of military contingencies, including options requiring rapid insertion of ground forces. The 82nd Airborne was placed on