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.