Iran hostage crisis

General information

During the riot, six Americans escaped on the confusion and fled to the Canadian Embassy in Iran, under the hospitality of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor. Mark Lijek, Cora Amburn Lijek, Joseph Stafford, Kathleen Stafford, Robert Anders and Henry Lee Schatz were then given fake Canadian passports so they were able to leave the Canadian Embassy, without being identified as Americans, after it had closed. Thirteen of the hostages were released on November 19 and 20 (the women and African-Americans amongst the group) but the remaining 52 continued to be held (one further hostage was released because of illness on July 11, 1980).

The students justified taking the hostages by claiming that it was a retaliation for the admission of Iran's deposed Shah, Pahlavi, into the United States for cancer treatments back in October. However, in actuality, the hostage-taking was less based around one specific event and was instead an act of demonstrating that the new Iranian government was well capable of opposing the Americans. It was also an act of retaliation against the United States' years of support of the Shah's totalitarian rule.

Ruhollah Khomeini was viciously anti-American in his rhetoric, denouncing the nation as the "Great Satan" and Americans as "infidels" and "enemies of Islam." The embassy had in fact been briefly seized once before during the revolution.

The U.S. President at the time, Jimmy Carter, immediately applied economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran: oil imports from Iran were ended on November 12, 1979, Iranians in the U.S. were expelled, and around $8 billion of Iranian assets in the U.S. were frozen on November 14, 1979.

Carter pledged himself to preserving the lives of the hostages, but beyond the initial measures he could do little. Ruhollah Khomeini did order the release of 13 female and African-Americans on November 17, 1979.

In February of 1980, the Iranian government issued a set of demands in return for freeing the hostages. They demanded the return of the Shah to Iran, and certain diplomatic gestures including an apology for prior American actions in Iran and a promise to not to interfere in the future.

Rejecting the Iranian demands, Carter approved an ill-conceived secret rescue mission: Operation Eagle Claw. On the night of April 24-25, 1980 —as the first part of the operation— a number of C-130 transport airplanes rendezvoused with nine RH-53 helicopters at an airstrip in the Great Salt Desert of South-Eastern Iran. Two helicopters broke down in a sandstorm and a third one was damaged on landing. The mission was aborted, but as the aircraft took off again one helicopter clipped a C-130 and crashed, killing eight U.S. servicemen and injuring more than four. The dead bodies of some of these soldiers were paraded through the streets of Teheran during massive street protests, all in front of television cameras broadcasting worldwide. Mission material was left behind for the Iranians to discover and later display to the world's media.

In the U.S. administration Cyrus Vance resigned, having opposed the action.

In 1980, the death of the Shah (July 27) and the invasion of Iran by Iraq in September made the Iranians more receptive to resolving the hostage crisis.

In the United States, Carter lost the November 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan. Most analysts believe Carter's inability to solve the hostage crisis played a large role in his defeat. See the entry at October Surprise for controversial allegations that the hostage release was delayed until after the election.

After winning the election, Reagan pushed hard for a resolution before his inauguration. Negotiations were successful ly completed after using the Algerian government as intermediaries. On the day of President Reagan's inauguration, the hostages were freed in exchange for the unfreezing of Iranian assets. They were 444 days in captivity. The hostages were flown to Wiesbaden Air Force Base in West Germany, and from there they took a second flight to Washington DC, where they received a hero's welcome.

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