The Iran hostage crisis (Persian: بحران گروگانگیری سفارت آمریکا) began on November 4, 1979, when 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, with 52 of them being held until the end of the crisis on January 20, 1981. The incident occurred after the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line stormed and occupied the building in the months following the Iranian Revolution. With support from Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Iranian Revolution and would eventually establish the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran, the hostage-takers demanded that the United States extradite Iranian king Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been granted asylum by the Carter administration for cancer treatment. Notable among the assailants were Hossein Dehghan (future Minister of Defense of Iran), Mohammad Ali Jafari (future Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), and Mohammad Bagheri (future Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces). The hostage crisis contributed to a dramatic decline in Iran–United States relations. After 444 days, it came to an end with the signing of the Algiers Accords between the Iranian and American governments; Pahlavi had died in Cairo, Egypt, on July 27, 1980.
The American magazine Time described the Iran hostage crisis as an entanglement of vengeance and mutual incomprehension. American president Jimmy Carter called the hostage-taking an act of "blackmail" and the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy." Among proponents of the Iranian Revolution, it was seen as an act against perceived attempts by the United States to undermine the uprising against Iran's king, who had been accused of committing numerous human rights abuses against Iranian dissidents through his Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State. The Carter administration's refusal to extradite Pahlavi was cited by the hostage-takers as proof of complicity on the part of the United States, which, in turn, denounced the Iranians' hostage-taking as an egregious violation of the principles of international law, such as the Vienna Convention, under which diplomats and diplomatic compounds are to be granted immunity from coercion and harassment.
Six American diplomats who had evaded capture were rescued by the "Canadian Caper" on January 27, 1980. As Iran hostage crisis negotiations dragged out and did not secure the release of the remaining hostages, Carter approved Operation Eagle Claw on April 24, 1980. The effort failed, however, resulting in the death of one Iranian civilian and eight American soldiers, prompting Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to resign from his position. By September 1980, the beginning of the Iraqi invasion of Iran spurred the Iranian government to negotiate with the United States as part of an initiative mediated by Algeria.
Political analysts cited the standoff as a major factor in the downfall of Carter's presidency, culminating in his landslide loss in the 1980 presidential election. The hostages were formally released into American custody one day after the Algiers Accords were signed, just minutes following the first inauguration of Ronald Reagan. In Iran, the crisis strengthened the prestige of Khomeini and the political power of theocrats who opposed normalization with the Western world. Since then, the United States has enforced international sanctions against Iran with regard to the latter's nuclear ambitions and human rights record, further weakening ties between the two countries.
Background
1953 Iranian coup d'état
During the Second World War, the British and the Soviet governments invaded and occupied Iran, forcing the first Pahlavi monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi, to abdicate in favor of his eldest son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The two nations claimed that they acted pre-emptively in order to stop Reza Shah from aligning his petroleum-rich country with Nazi Germany. However, the Shah's declaration of neutrality, and his refusal to allow Iranian territory to be used to train or supply Soviet troops, were probably the real reasons for the invasion of Iran.
The United States did not participate in the invasion but it secured Iran's independence after the war ended by applying intense diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union which forced it to withdraw from Iran in 1946.
By the 1950s, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was engaged in a power struggle with Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, an immediate descendant of the preceding Qajar dynasty. Mosaddegh led a general strike, demanding an increased share of the nation's petroleum revenue from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which was operating in Iran. The UK retaliated by reducing the amount of revenue which the Iranian government received. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 helped Iranian royalists depose Mosaddegh in a military coup d'état codenamed Operation Ajax, allowing the Shah to extend his power. For the next two decades the Shah reigned as an absolute monarch. "Disloyal" elements within the state were purged. The U.S. continued to support the Shah after the coup, with the CIA training the Iranian secret police. In the subsequent decades of the Cold War, various economic, cultural, and political issues united Iranian opposition against the Shah and led to his eventual overthrow.
The Carter administration and the Shah
Months before the Iranian Revolution, on New Year's Eve 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter further angered anti-Shah Iranians with a televised toast to Pahlavi at a state dinner in Tehran, saluting the Shah's character. After the revolution commenced in February 1979 with the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini from exile, the American Embassy was occupied, and its staff held hostage briefly. Rocks and bullets had broken so many of the embassy's front-facing windows that they were replaced with bulletproof glass. The embassy's staff was reduced to just over 60 from a high of nearly one thousand earlier in the decade.
The Carter administration tried to mitigate anti-American feeling by promoting a new relationship with the de facto Iranian government and continuing military cooperation in the hope that the situation would stabilize. However, on October 22, 1979, the United States permitted the Shah, who had lymphoma, to enter New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center for medical treatment. The State Department had discouraged this decision, understanding the political delicacy. But in response to pressure from influential figures including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Council on Foreign Relations Chairman David Rockefeller, the Carter administration decided to grant it.
The Shah's admission to the United States intensified Iranian revolutionaries' anti-Americanism and spawned rumors of another U.S.–backed coup that would re-install him. Khomeini, who had been exiled by the Shah for 15 years, heightened the rhetoric against the "Great Satan", as he called the U.S., talking of "evidence of American plotting." In addition to ending what they believed was American sabotage of the revolution, the hostage takers hoped to depose the provisional revolutionary government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, which they believed was plotting to normalize relations with the U.S. and extinguish Islamic revolutionary order in Iran. The occupation of the embassy on November 4, 1979, was also intended as leverage to demand the return of the Shah to stand trial in Iran in exchange for the hostages.
Prelude
First embassy assault
On the morning of February 14, 1979, the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took a Marine named Kenneth Kraus hostage. Ambassador William H. Sullivan surrendered the embassy to save lives, and with the assistance of Iranian Foreign Minister Ebrahim Yazdi, returned the embassy to U.S. hands within three hours. Kraus was injured in the attack, kidnapped by the militants, tortured, tried, and convicted of murder. He was to be executed, but President Carter and Sullivan secured his release within six days. This incident became known as the Valentine's Day Open House.
Second embassy assault
The next attempt to seize the American Embassy was planned for September 1979 by Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a student at the time. He consulted with the heads of the Islamic associations of Tehran's main universities, including the University of Tehran, Sharif University of Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology (Polytechnic of Tehran), and Iran University of Science and Technology. They named their group Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line.
Asgharzadeh later said there were five students at the first meeting, two of whom wanted to target the Soviet Embassy because the USSR was "a Marxist and anti-God regime". Two others, Mohsen Mirdamadi and Habibolah Bitaraf, supported Asgharzadeh's chosen target, the United States. "Our aim was to object against the American government by going to their embassy and occupying it for several hours," Asgharzadeh said. "Announcing our objections from within the occupied compound would carry our message to the world in a much more firm and effective way." Mirdamadi told an interviewer, "We intended to detain the diplomats for a few days, maybe one week, but no more." Masoumeh Ebtekar, the spokeswoman for the Iranian students during the crisis, said that those who rejected Asgharzadeh's plan did not participate in the subsequent events.
The students observed the procedures of the Marine Security Guards from nearby rooftops overlooking the embassy. They also drew on their experiences from the recent revolution, during which the U.S. Embassy grounds were briefly occupied. They enlisted the support of police officers in charge of guarding the embassy and of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Asgharzadeh and other senior organizers (including Abbas Abdi and Mohsen Mirdammadi, now a professor of political science) rejected claims that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had orchestrated or instructed them to carry out the attack. The students had wanted to inform him, but according to the author Mark Bowden, Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha persuaded them not to do so. Khoeiniha feared that the government would use the police to expel the students as they had the occupiers in February. The provisional government had been appointed by Khomeini, so Khomeini was likely to go along with the government's request to restore order. On the other hand, Khoeiniha knew that if Khomeini first saw that the occupiers were faithful supporters of him (unlike the leftists in the first occupation) and that large numbers of pious Muslims had gathered outside the embassy to show their support for the takeover, it would be "very hard, perhaps even impossible," for him to oppose the takeover, and this would paralyze the Bazargan administration, which Khoeiniha and the students wanted to eliminate.
Supporters of the takeover stated that their motivation was fear of another American-backed coup against their popular revolution.
Third embassy assault and seizure of hostages
On November 4, 1979, one of the demonstrations organized by Iranian student unions loyal to Khomeini erupted into an all-out conflict right outside the walled compound housing the U.S. Embassy.
At about 6:30 a.m., the ringleaders gathered between three hundred and five hundred selected students and briefed them on the battle plan. A female student was given a pair of metal cutters to break the chains locking the embassy's gates and hid them beneath her chador.
At first, the students planned a symbolic occupation, in which they would release statements to the press and leave when government security forces came to restore order. This was reflected in placards saying: "Don't be afraid. We just want to sit in." When the embassy guards brandished firearms, the protesters retreated, with one telling the Americans, "We don't mean any harm." But as it became clear that the guards would not use deadly force and that a large, angry crowd had gathered outside the compound to cheer the occupiers and jeer the hostages, the plan changed. According to one embassy staff member, buses full of demonstrators began to appear outside the embassy shortly after the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line broke through the gates.
As Khomeini's followers had hoped, Khomeini supported the takeover. According to Foreign Minister Yazdi, when he went to Qom to tell Khomeini about it, Khomeini told him to "go and kick them out." But later that evening, back in Tehran, Yazdi heard on the radio that Khomeini had issued a statement supporting the seizure, calling it "the second revolution" and the embassy an "American spy den in Tehran."
The Marines and embassy staff were blindfolded by the occupiers and then paraded in front of assembled photographers. In the first couple of days, many of the embassy workers who had sneaked out of the compound or had not been there at the time of the takeover were rounded up by Islamists and returned as hostages. Six American diplomats managed to avoid capture and went into hiding until one of the diplomats Robert Anders called his Canadian counterpart John Sheardown seeking help. The group of six stayed in the personal homes of two Canadian diplomats. Two of the six stayed with Canadian Ambassador Kenneth Taylor, the other four staying with the Sheardown family for 79 days. In a joint covert operation known as the Canadian Caper, the Canadian government and the CIA managed to smuggle them out of Iran on January 28, 1980, using Canadian passports and a cover story that identified them as a film crew. Others went to the Swedish Embassy in Tehran for three months.
A State Department diplomatic cable of November 8, 1979, details "A Tentative, Incomplete List of U.S. Personnel Being Held in the Embassy Compound."
Motives and demands
The Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line demanded that Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi return to Iran for trial and execution. The U.S. maintained that the Shah—who was to die less than a year later, in July 1980—had come to America for medical attention. The group's other demands included that the U.S. government apologize for its interference in the internal affairs of Iran, including the overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953, and that Iran's frozen assets in the United States be released.
The initial plan was to hold the embassy for only a short time, but this changed after it became apparent how popular the takeover was and that Khomeini had given it his full support. Some attributed the decision not to release the hostages quickly to President Carter's failure to immediately deliver an ultimatum to Iran. His initial response was to appeal for the release of the hostages on humanitarian grounds and to share his hope for a strategic anti-communist alliance with the Ayatollah. As some of the student leaders had hoped, Iran's moderate prime minister, Bazargan, and his cabinet resigned under pressure just days after the takeover.
The duration of the hostages' captivity has also been attributed to internal Iranian revolutionary politics. As Ayatollah Khomeini told Iran's president:
This has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put the constitution to the people's vote without difficulty, and carry out presidential and parliamentary elections.