Iran hostage crisis

For 444 days, from November 1979 to January 1981, Iranian students loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini held American diplomats and staff captive in the United States embassy in Tehran. The seizure, which came months after the Iranian Revolution, was meant to force the United States to hand over the deposed Shah for trial. Fifty-two Americans were held until the very end, and the crisis poisoned relations between the two countries and helped end Jimmy Carter's presidency.

Many Iranians blamed the United States for the 1953 coup that had restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's power, and for its support of his rule in the decades that followed. In February 1979 Khomeini returned from exile as the monarchy collapsed, and the embassy was briefly occupied that month. On 22 October 1979 the Carter administration, under pressure from influential supporters of the Shah, allowed him into the United States for treatment of lymphoma at a New York hospital, against the advice of the State Department. The hostage-takers later cited Washington's refusal to send him back as proof that it was complicit in his rule.

On 4 November 1979 a group calling itself the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line forced its way through the embassy gates. The organisers had planned a short symbolic sit-in, but when the guards did not use deadly force and a large crowd gathered in support, the occupation became open-ended. Sixty-six Americans were taken hostage, blindfolded and paraded before cameras. Khomeini, who according to Foreign Minister Yazdi first told him to have the students removed, soon publicly endorsed the takeover, calling it a "second revolution" and the embassy a "spy den". On 19 and 20 November the captors released thirteen hostages, all women or African Americans, and in July 1980 another hostage, Richard Queen, was freed after falling seriously ill. Six diplomats who had escaped capture hid in the homes of Canadian diplomats and were smuggled out of Iran in late January 1980, with false Canadian passports, in the operation known as the Canadian Caper.

Negotiations made little progress, and Carter approved a military rescue, Operation Eagle Claw, over the objections of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. On 24 April 1980 eight helicopters took off from USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier, for a desert landing site in eastern Iran known as Desert One. Dust storms and mechanical failures left too few working helicopters, and the mission was abandoned. As the force withdrew, a helicopter collided with a transport aircraft, killing eight American servicemen; an Iranian civilian also died during the operation. Vance, who had already handed in his resignation in protest, left office days later.

The Shah died in Cairo on 27 July 1980. In September Iraq invaded Iran, beginning the Iran–Iraq War and giving Tehran new reasons to settle. Algeria acted as mediator, and its central bank held the funds at the centre of the deal. The Algiers Accords were signed on 19 January 1981, and in all the United States transferred about $7.956 billion of Iranian assets. The hostages were freed on 20 January, minutes after Ronald Reagan took the oath of office. They were flown to Algiers, handed to American officials, and then taken to West Germany, where Carter, now acting as an emissary, welcomed them.

Political analysts regard the crisis as a major reason for Carter's heavy defeat in the 1980 election. In Iran it boosted Khomeini's prestige and strengthened clerics opposed to closer ties with the West. Relations between Iran and the United States were severed, and in later decades Washington imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Iran. Among the hostage-takers were men who later rose to senior posts in the Islamic Republic's defence establishment, including Mohammad Bagheri, chief of the general staff.

Our 1960 and 1985 maps show Iran before and after the revolution that led to the crisis.