Iranian Hostage Crisis

views updated May 29 2018

Iranian Hostage Crisis

█ STEPHANIE WATSON

On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran, Iran, and captured dozens of embassy and military personnel. For 444 days, fiftytwo Americans remained captive in Iran, while their nation waited, hoped, and hung yellow ribbons. The outcome of the hostage crisis would ultimately change the course of a presidency, and malign relations between two powerful nations.

The origins of anti-American fervor. In the early 1970s, America and Iran enjoyed mutually satisfying relations. At the time, the country was ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a man the American government had supported for more than twenty-five years. Pahlavi had risen to power thanks to British and Soviet forces, which jointly installed Pahlavi on the throne in 1941 to gain valuable influence over the country's oil. Two years later, the United States and Great Britain made a formal declaration to promote Iran's independence, primarily to prevent the communists from gaining a strong foothold in the country.

In the early 1950s, the Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, began gaining power and public support, and vehemently opposed the western influence in Iran. In 1952, Mossadegh's party won the national elections, and he demanded control over Iran's armed forces, which Pahlavi denied. In 1953, the United States Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) secretly helped to overthrow Mossadegh and restore Pahlavi to power. Pahlavi remained a friend to the United States, but endured harsh criticism by his countrymen for ruling with an iron fist, and living opulently off the spoils of his country's oil production while the majority of his people lived in poverty. During the next two decades, the Shah attempted to bring further Western influence to Iran, a practice that was an anathema to the growing numbers of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the country. Those who dared oppose the Shah's rule faced the risk of torture or death at the hands of his secret police.

In 1978, Iranian opposition leaders organized strikes, demonstrations, and riots in protest of the Shah's policies. In Paris, exiled Islamic leader Ayatolla Ruhollah Khomeini (Pahlavi had sent Khomeini from the country amid riots in the early 1960s) slowly began to gain popularity among the Iranian people. In December, 1978, Khomeini issued a proclamation calling for Iranians to "unite, arise, and sacrifice your blood," urging them to defy the Shah's order prohibiting public demonstrations. Khomeini's words

inspired his followers to fill the streets, chanting religious slogans and calling for revolution. The Shah was left with two choices: surrender or clamp down on his people militarily to restore order. On January 16, 1979, the Shah stepped down from power and fled to Morocco.

Khomeini returned to Iran on February 1, 1979, where he was greeted by millions of his followers. Less than two weeks later, Khomeini assumed power, announcing the creation of a new fundamentalist Islamic state. Khomeini labeled the United States "The Great Satan." Hatred grew when U.S. President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah to travel to America later that year for cancer treatment. Furious students gathered in the streets, raising their fists and shouting, "Death to America," assuming the United States was again trying to secretly restore the Shah to power.

On the morning of November 4, 1979, Iranian fervor reached a boiling point. A crowd gathered around the U.S. embassy, shouting anti-American slogans. At 10:30 a.m. about three thousand people jumped the ten-foot wall surrounding the embassy and swarmed the grounds, forcing their way into the basement and first floor of the chancery building. The guards launched tear gas, but they were unable to control the mob. The Islamic militants rounded up 66 embassy workers, military officials, and Marine guards. The hostages were blindfolded, bound, and shoved into windowless rooms. Fifty-three people were held captive in the embassy compound. It was unclear what role, if any, Khomeini played in orchestrating the hostage crisis, but it was clear that he did little to stop it. When Khomeini noted how popular the hostage situation had become among his people, he allowed it to continue, despite continuous pressure from the United States government.

Americans watched the events of the crisis played out on television. Yellow ribbons were tied around tree trunks throughout the country in commemoration of the hostages. President Carter responded by freezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets, both in the United States and abroad, and by instituting an embargo on Iranian oil. Still, the Iranians refused to release the hostages, demanding the Shah's extradition to Iran.

A rescue attempt. While President Carter was trying to negotiate the hostages' release, behind-the-scenes a daring rescue plan was taking shape. The proposal was to swoop in and land eight American military helicopters in the embassy compound, extract the hostages, and escape to six planes waiting on an airstrip in the Iranian desert. On April 24, 1980, the plan was launched. The mission, however, was fraught with mistakes and bad luck. Three of the helicopters malfunctioned; the pilot of a fourth, blinded by a dust storm, crashed into a refueling aircraft. Eight U.S. servicemen were killed in the unsuccessful operation.

The hostage-takers responded to the failed rescue attempt by moving their captives to several secret locations in different cities. On July 11, one ill captive was released. Meanwhile, the ongoing hostage crisis was costing President Carter the support of his people and some of his advisors, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the rescue. Carter later lost his reelection bid to former California governor Ronald Reagan in a landslide.

The siege ends. In the fall of 1980, the exiled Shah died of cancer complications. In September, Iran agreed to begin negotiations for the hostages' release. In exchange for their release, the United States agreed to turn over $8 billion of Iran's frozen assets, and to refrain from interfering politically or militarily in Iran's internal affairs. The United States and Iran signed the agreement on January 19, 1981, but in a final embarrassment to Carter, the militants did not release the hostages until January 20, the day President Reagan was inaugurated. Just minutes after Reagan took office, a plane carrying the fifty-two remaining hostages left Tehran for a U.S. Army base in Germany. From his home in Georgia, former president Carter announced that the plane carrying the hostages had cleared Iranian airspace, and that every one of the hostages "was alive, was well, and free."

█ FURTHER READING:

BOOKS:

Rivers, Gayle, and James Hudson. The Teheran Contract. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc.,1981.

Sick, Gary. All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran. New York: Random House, Inc., 1985.

Wells, Tim. Four Hundred and Forty-Four Days: The Hostages Remember. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1985.

PERIODICALS:

Schaumburg, Ron. "Americans Held Hostage." New York Times Upfront. (January 15, 2001):23.

Olson, Tod. "America Held Hostage: The Iranian Hostage Crisis Would Torment America—and Topple a President."Scholastic Update. (May 11, 1998):20–22.

Iran Hostage Crisis

views updated Jun 27 2018

Iran Hostage Crisis

Beginning in 1953, when the United States helped to overthrow the popular Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq (1882–1967), Iran condemned the United States as an oppressive power that interfered in foreign governments. The United States supported the new, unpopular government in Iran, which only worsened the country's feelings toward the superpower.

Relations between the two countries were particularly strained in 1977. The Iranian economy, which had boomed between 1973 and

1975, began to deteriorate rapidly. There was a huge gap in the distribution of income between those who lived in the country, who were wretchedly poor, and those in the cities. A shortage of skilled labor brought in workers from Korea, the United States, and the Philippines.

The bazaar (open marketplace where goods are sold in booths or stands) was the heart of Iran's economy, but in 1977, government-controlled inspectors prowled the streets looking for price gougers who sold items at hugely inflated prices. Those found were arrested and exiled. The government's corrupt schemes and policies kept the poor desperate.

In that same year, Islam became a powerful political force, and Iranians embraced the religion as a means of dealing with the tyranny of the government.

Conditions worsen

U.S. president Jimmy Carter (1924–; served 1977–81) was dedicated to human rights, not only for citizens of his homeland but also for people everywhere. In order to continue receiving military and financial support from the United States, Iran's shah (head of government, like a king), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980), implemented a reform program focused on land reform and literacy. Most Iranians felt the shah's efforts improved conditions only minimally, and they feared things would regress once he had won Carter's approval.

The shah and his henchmen responded to his critics with arrests and torture. Protests and demonstrations became common occurrences as the Iranian people refused to be oppressed any longer. Between January 1978 and February 1979, an estimated ten to twelve thousand people were killed, and another fifty thousand were injured by the shah's forces.

Because the United States supported the shah's violent regime, the Iranian citizens’ anti-American sentiment increased. Conditions reached the lowest point when the corrupt shah left Iran and was granted refuge (safety) in New York City in October 1979 to receive some medical treatment. He had lost his country to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (c. 1900–1989).

Hostages are taken

On November 4, 1979, a group of almost five hundred radical Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Teheran and took hostage about ninety people. Most of them worked in the embassy, and sixty-six of them were U.S. citizens. The students held fifty-two of them hostage for 444 days. The hostages were poorly fed, placed in small cells, and ordered not to communicate. Those who broke the rules were locked in solitary confinement for as long as three days. Near the end of their captivity, the hostages were forced to stand before mock firing squads.

Most nations joined the United States in condemning the Iranian revolutionaries’ actions. Carter underestimated the power of the Islamic revival, and his inability to get the hostages freed caused irreparable harm to his presidency. He never wavered in his support of the exiled shah, and when an attempt to rescue the hostages had to be aborted in April 1980, the president's popularity was permanently damaged.

Historians generally agree that the Iran hostage crisis was one of the primary reasons why Republican Party candidate Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; served 1981–89) won the 1980 presidential election by a landslide. On January 20, 1981, the day of Reagan's inauguration, the hostages were freed.

Before the hostage crisis, Iran had been a country shrouded in mystery. The wide media coverage of the crisis forced the United States and other countries to try to understand Iran and its people. Unfortunately, the crisis left a legacy of misunderstanding that would cripple Iranian-American relations for years.

From the point of view of the Iran revolutionaries, the hostage crisis enabled them to prove what they had been claiming all along: Once the embassy was seized, the militants found evidence that the United States had joined forces with the Soviet Union to back the Iranian government and oppose the revolution. In taking the hostages, they won the support of the masses and effectively ended any attempt the United States might have made to reverse the revolution.

U*X*L Encyclopedia of U.S. History

Iran Hostage Crisis

views updated May 14 2018

IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS

IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS. On 4 November 1979, Islamic militants overran the American embassy in Teheran, Iran, initiating a crisis that lasted through the end of President Jimmy Carter's term. The militants held fifty-two of the embassy's personnel hostage for 444 days. Relations between the United States and Iran began to disintegrate in early 1979, during the Iranian revolution. Following the overthrow of the U.S. ally Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi, the new government, led by the Muslim fundamentalist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, focused much of its fervor against the United States, culminating with the embassy takeover following Carter's decision to allow the shah to enter the United States for cancer treatment. The United States attempted to pursue political, diplomatic, and economic measures to broker the release of the hostages. Carter also organized a military contingency plan in the event that nonmilitary solutions failed.

The White House attempted several failed diplomatic initiatives and mounted a campaign of international pressure on Iran, which brought condemnations from governments around the world. The sole successful diplomatic measure was an initiative from Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) representatives that gained the release of thirteen female and African American hostages. Carter also signed an order to freeze all of Iran's assets in American banks.

Despite continued pressure on Iran, the hostages remained in captivity five months after the crisis began, and pressure mounted on the Carter administration to find a more effective solution. After much deliberation, Carter authorized an ill-fated military mission to rescue the hostages. The 24 April 1979 rescue mission suffered from military miscalculations and untimely mechanical failures, forcing the mission to be aborted. The final mishap came during a refueling stop, when two of the helicopters collided, killing eight servicemen. When President Carter informed the nation of the mission and its failure, he suffered politically.

The failure of the rescue mission did not end negotiations, but the administration appeared to be paralyzed by the crisis. The Iranians released the hostages on 20 January 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as president. U.S. relations with Iran did not return to their earlier cordial nature during the twentieth century. Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton faced a hostile Islamic state on the borders of the Persian Gulf.