HOSTAGE CRISES

International crises intertwined with domestic politics in Iran and Lebanon.

In Tehran on 4 November 1979, a mob led by radical college students overran the U.S. embassy and took its personnel hostage. They announced that they would not free the diplomats until the United States agreed to extradite the country's former ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941–1979). The shah, overthrown nine months earlier, had been admitted to the United States for cancer treatment two weeks before seizure of the embassy. Within days of the incident, Iran's revolutionary leaders endorsed the demands of the students and supported their claim that the U.S. embassy was a "den of espionage." U.S. efforts to exert pressure on Iran through diplomatic means (UN resolutions), economic sanctions (freezing Iran's assets in U.S. banks), and military actions (an abortive helicopter rescue attempt) proved unsuccessful in getting the hostages freed. Even the death of the shah, in July 1980, had no apparent effect. Only after Iraq invaded Iran in the fall of 1980 did Tehran indicate a serious interest in resolving the hostage issue. Iran and the United States subsequently accepted Algerian mediation, an accord that freed the hostages and established a tribunal to settle outstanding claims was signed in January 1981.

The kidnapping of Europeans and Americans in Lebanon that began in 1984 created a new, albeit less dramatic, hostage crisis. The militias that carried out the kidnappings wanted the governments of the hostages to pressure Israel to release Lebanese nationals that were detained in a special prison for those suspected of organizing resistance to Israel's occupation of south Lebanon. Because Iran supported these same militias, the United States was convinced that Iran could exert influence to get the hostages released. Some U.S. officials undertook secret negotiations with Iran that included covert arrangements to sell Iran weapons in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon. The weapons sales led to the freeing of only two hostages over the course of a year during which more Westerners in Lebanon were abducted. In October 1986, revelations of the arms-for-hostages deals caused grave embarrassment to the administration of U.S. president Ronald Reagan and resulted in the resignation of several senior aides. The scandal was compounded by revelations that profits from the secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to secret accounts used to buy weapons for U.S.-backed forces (contras) trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. The fallout from the scandal put hostage negotiations on hold for several months. The last U.S. and other Western hostages in Lebanon were not released until 1991.

See also iran–contra affair; pahlavi, mohammad reza; reagan, ronald.

Bibliography

Picco, Giandomenico. Man without a Gun: One Diplomat's Secret Struggle to Free the Hostages, Fight Terrorism, and End a War. New York: Times Books/Random House, 1999.

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

eric hooglund