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The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic standoff between Iran and the United States.Fifty-three American diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, including Hossein Dehghan (future Iranian Minister of Defense), Mohammad Ali Jafari (future ...
- Timeline of The Iranian Hostage Crisis
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- Timeline of The Iranian Hostage Crisis
- Overview
- The crisis
The Iran hostage crisis was an international crisis that began in November 1979 when militants seized 66 U.S. citizens in Tehrān and held 52 of them hostage for more than a year. The crisis took place in the wake of Iranian Revolution (1978–79).
How did the Iran hostage crisis end?
The Iran hostage crisis ended after negotiations held in 1980 and early 1981, with Algerian diplomats acting as intermediaries. Iran’s demands centered largely on releasing frozen Iranian assets and lifting a trade embargo that the U.S. had coordinated. An agreement having been made, the hostages were released on January 20, 1981.
Who ordered the release of 13 hostages during the Iran hostage crisis?
On November 17, 1979, about two weeks after the Iran hostage crisis began, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 hostages, all women or African Americans, claiming that they were unlikely to be spies.
Who was the U.S. president during the Iran hostage crisis?
Iran’s revolution deeply altered that country’s relationship with the United States. The deposed Iranian ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, had been close to a succession of U.S. administrations, and this had produced deep suspicion and hostility among Iran’s revolutionary leaders, from both the left and right of the political spectrum. Beginning in the fall of 1978, the U.S. embassy in Tehrān had been the scene of frequent demonstrations by Iranians who opposed the American presence in the country, and on February 14, 1979, about a month after the shah had fled Iran, the embassy was attacked and briefly occupied. The embassy weathered this assault, during which several of its personnel were killed or wounded, but Iran was in the throes of enormous revolutionary change, which called for a new U.S. posture in Iran. Consequently, by the start of the hostage crisis, the embassy staff had been cut from more than 1,400 men and women before the revolution to about 70. In addition, attempts had been made to arrive at a modus vivendi with Iran’s provisional government, and during the spring and summer the Iranian authorities sought to strengthen security around the embassy complex.
In October 1979 the U.S. State Department was informed that the deposed Iranian monarch required medical treatment that his aides claimed was available only in the United States; U.S. authorities, in turn, informed the Iranian prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, of the shah’s impending arrival on American soil. Bazargan, in light of the February attack, guaranteed the safety of the U.S. embassy and its staff. The shah arrived in New York City on October 22. The initial public response in Iran was moderate, but on November 4 the embassy was attacked by a mob of perhaps 3,000, some of whom were armed and who, after a short siege, took 63 American men and women hostage. (An additional three members of the U.S. diplomatic staff were actually seized at the Iranian Foreign Ministry.) Within the next few days, representatives of U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter and Tehrān-based diplomats from other countries attempted but failed to free the hostages. An American delegation headed by former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark—who had long-standing relations with many Iranian officials—was refused admission to Iran.
A political struggle was afoot in Tehrān—between the Islamic right and secular left and between various personalities within the Muslim coterie surrounding the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—and the hostages apparently were caught in the stalemate resulting from this dispute. It soon became evident that no one within the virulently anti-American atmosphere of postrevolutionary Iran was willing, or able, to release the hostages. The hostage takers themselves most likely were supporters of Khomeini—whose failure to order the release of the hostages led Bazargan to resign the premiership on November 6—and demanded, as a condition of the hostages’ release, that the United States extradite the shah to Iran.
On November 12 acting Iranian foreign minister Abolhasan Bani-Sadr indicated that the hostages would be released if the United States ceased interfering in Iranian affairs, if the shah was returned to Iran for trial, and if assets in the possession of the shah were declared stolen property. The United States responded by stating that Iran was free to make financial claims against the shah in U.S. courts and further declared that it would support establishing an international commission to investigate purported human rights abuses under the shah’s regime; as a precondition of any such actions, however, the hostages would have to be returned.
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Jun 1, 2010 · Iran Hostage Crisis. Updated: April 23, 2024 | Original: June 1, 2010. On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages ...
May 26, 2020 · The Iran hostage crisis (November 4, 1979 – January 20, 1981) was a tense diplomatic standoff between the governments of the United States and Iran in which Iranian militants held 52 American citizens hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. Spurred by anti-American feelings arising from Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, the ...
The hostage-takers, who had the tacit support of the new Iranian regime of Ruhollah Khomeini, demanded Mohammad Reza’s extradition to Iran, but U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter refused and froze all Iranian assets in the U.S. The Iranians released 13 women and African Americans on Nov. 19–20, 1979, and another hostage was released in July 1980.
