Salem Press

The following excerpt, written after the Iranian revolutionaries had released the final hostages on January 20, 1981, is from the diary of Robert C. Ode, a retired foreign service officer on temporary duty in Tehran who was one of the fifty-two remaining hostages at the conclusion of the crisis.

The voice came over the Algerian plane's speaker: "You are now leaving Iranian air space!" What a cheer went up from the American hostages on the plane! This was the moment for which we had waited 444 days. Now we knew we were really free! Even though we had been told by the Iranian terrorists that we were being set free, I'm sure all of the hostages didn't really feel that we were on our way to freedom until we actually were out of Iran. So much still could go wrong in the process of obtaining our freedom . . . but the confirmation that we were actually out of Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini's jurisdiction made us finally realize that our ordeal was over! What a magnificent feeling! We were on our way at last! We were going home!

Great Events from History: The 20th Century
Iranian Revolutionaries Hold Americans Hostage

The U.S. government's support for the shah of Iran evoked the ire of Iranian revolutionaries,who took American diplomats hostage, adding new human rights violations to those of the priorregime.

Also Known As:Iran hostage crisis
Locale: Tehran, Iran
Categories: Terrorism, atrocities, and war crimes; diplomacy and international
relations

Key Figures
Jimmy Carter (b. 1924), president of the United States, 1977-1981
Ayatollah Khomeini (1900/1902-1989), Islamic religious leader who became the
chief politicalfigure in Iran in 1979
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-1980), shah of Iran, r. 1941-1979
Cyrus Vance (1917-2002), U.S. secretary of state, 1977-1980

Summary of Event
The anti-American sentiment that culminated in the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in1977 had its roots in the 1953 overthrow of popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. Priorto that time, the United States had been praised by many Iranians as a liberating force that hadprotected them from the British and the Russians. After 1953, however, Iranians of all politicalpersuasions began to condemn the United States as an oppressive exploiter that had allied itselfwith the imperialistic interests of Great Britain. American support for the governing regime ofIran, which began with the rescue of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, solidified the reputation ofthe United States as an interventionist power in the eyes of many Iranian citizens. By the 1970's,the anti-American movement had become associated with the antimonarchical movement thathad arisen as a response to the shah's oppressive policies.

The year 1977 set the stage for the Iranian revolution and the virtual severance of ties betweenIran and the United States. First, the Iranian economy, which had experienced a boom between1973 and 1975, began to plummet. The tremendous gap in the distribution of income betweenrural and urban people was aggravated by the fact that the peasants could not compete withimports that were being sold at subsidized prices. Because there was a shortage of skilledlaborers, workers were imported from the Philippines, Korea, and the United States. In an effortto control spiraling inflation, the shah set up groups of inspectors who prowled through thebazaars looking for price gougers. Because most of the people who were arrested and exiled werethe pillars of the traditional business community, the bazaar, which lay at the heart of the Iranianeconomy, was alienated. Even after the economy began to level off later in the year, the peoplewere no better off because the corruption that had accompanied the boom in the early 1970's wasfirmly entrenched in the economic system. It is important to note that many people who hadinstigated the taking of bribes, the fraudulent land schemes, and the exorbitant commissions oncontracts were the shah's family and his close associates.

The event that had the greatest impact on Iranian and American relations in 1977 was the revivalof Islam. Throughout that year, young men and women in secondary schools, universities, andreligious study centers engaged in dialogue concerning social and political matters. Women evenbegan wearing the long black chador as a way of making a political statement. The resurgence ofIslam as a powerful political force first became evident on October 9, 1977, when two dozenmasked students at Tehran University burned buses and smashed windows to protest theintegration of women on campus. During the following weeks, a number of religiousdemonstrations were held in the holy city of Qum. Iranians appeared to embrace Islam as arefuge from the tyranny of the shah's regime.

The year 1977 was also witness to the shah's liberalization program, which was developed as aresponse not only to the growing Islamic movement but also to President Jimmy Carter's humanrights policy. On January 20, 1977, President Carter said in his inaugural address, "Our moralsense dictates a clear preference for those societies which share with us an abiding respect forindividual human rights." Hoping to win continued military and financial support from theUnited States, the shah instituted the White Revolution, which was a reform program thatfocused on land reform and literacy. He also invited Amnesty International, the International RedCross, and the International Commission of Jurists to investigate the social and politicalconditions in Iran.

The volatile situation in Iran was made even worse by Cyrus Vance's visit to Tehran in May,1977, for the purpose of discussing the sale of 160 F-16 aircraft to Iran. After Vance's return, theUnited States tried to emphasize the progress that the shah had made in human rights, but mostIranians believed that the shah had improved conditions only a little and that he would regressonce he had won favor in President Carter's eyes. The shah's critics pointed to the fact that onlyone political party, the shah's Rastakhiz Party, was permitted in Iran. They also exposed theshah's tendency to categorize his opponents as either communists or reactionary clerics. Bothtypes of opponents, the shah's critics claimed, were branded as "suffering from mentalimbalance" and thrown into prison, where they were beaten and tortured.

Ironically, the efforts by the shah's police and the military to destroy the opposition in 1978 onlyserved to strengthen it. A secret network of the Ayatollah Khomeini's followers, which had beenin place ever since his exile in 1964, escalated its operation by distributing millions of dollars tothe impoverished masses who were its constituents. On January 8, 1978, an event occurred thatunited the fragmented opposition forces. Following a verbal attack on Khomeini in thenewspaper Ittila'at the day before, clerics and students staged a massive protest march in Qum.The police opened fire, killing two dozen people and wounding many more. Thereafter,antiregime demonstrations became commonplace; at least one was held every month fromJanuary, 1978, to February, 1979. By the end of the fourteen-month period, an estimated ten totwelve thousand persons had been killed and another forty-five to fifty thousand had beeninjured.

Anti-American sentiment, which had been growing along with the opposition movement,increased dramatically after the Black Friday massacre on September 8, 1978. The shah's soldiershad fired at the crowds in Jalah square, killing and wounding hundreds of unarmed men, women,and children. Two days later, President Carter called the shah and assured him that he still hadthe support of the United States. This phone call was construed by the Iranian people as anexpression of the U.S. president's approval of the Jalah massacre. The Iranians' hostility towardthe United States reached its peak when the shah was granted refuge in New York City onOctober 22, 1979, following the takeover of his country by the Ayatollah Khomeini on February1.

The new era in Iranian-American relations of distrust and violence that was ushered in after thefall of the shah reached tragic proportions in November. On November 1, 1979, two millionangry Iranians demonstrated in Tehran, shouting slogans such as "Death to America." OnNovember 4, 1979, a group of nearly five hundred extremist students stormed the U.S. embassyin Tehran and initially took about ninety hostages, most of whom were embassy workers andabout sixty of whom were U.S. citizens. The extremists vowed to hold the hostages until theUnited States returned the shah to Iran to stand trial.

For the next 444 days, the fifty-two Americans who remained as hostages (some hostages werereleased early) were subjected to the same sort of inhumane treatment that the shah had beenaccused of by the revolutionaries. After being held in the embassy for twenty days, the hostageswere bound, blindfolded, covered with blankets, and taken to a series of makeshift prisons.During a series of seemingly endless interrogations, they were beaten and humiliated by theircaptors. Except for a rare "feast" of hamburgers and sodas, their meals consisted of bread and teain the morning, cold rice at lunch, and cold soup at night. The only exercise they were permittedwas an hour of running in place in the morning. After three months, the hostages were placed insmall cells; during their incarceration, they were not permitted to communicate. Hostages whoviolated the rules were locked in cold, dark cubicles for as long as three days. Toward the end oftheir confinement, they were forced to stand before a mock firing squad. When the hostages werefinally released on January 20, 1981, their emaciated and hollow-eyed appearance provided mutetestimony to the suffering that they had endured during their brutal ordeal.

Significance
The taking of hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran immediately received worldwideattention. Most of the nations of the world joined the United States in condemning the actions ofthe Iranian revolutionaries as blatant violations of long-standing international diplomatic norms.Diplomatic relations with Iran were severed. An embargo on trade with Iran was imposed bymany countries, even as Carter froze Iranian assets in American banks, and the World Courtissued a decision condemning the hostage-taking as a violation of international customary andtreaty law.

In 1983, a United Nations treaty took effect that called for ratifying nations to prosecute thehostage-takers or to return them to their countries for trial. On the other hand, the success withwhich the Iranians used hostages to render a superpower impotent inspired terrorists in othernations, especially in the Middle East, to do the same. The unprecedented media coverage thatthe hostage crisis received also opened up a country that had previously been shrouded inmystery. Both during and after the hostage crisis, the United States and many other nations madea serious effort to understand the Iranian position, and negotiations persisted behind the scenes toresolve the dispute, with Algeria serving as a third party mediator.

From the point of view of the revolutionary factions in Iran, the seizure of the American embassyin Tehran was fortuitous because it helped to radicalize politics in Iran. Once the embassy wastaken, the militants set about the task of piecing together shredded State Department documentsthey found, with the intention of proving their contention that the American embassy was a "nestof spies." The documents that the militants recovered supported their claim that the United Statesand the Soviet Union had joined forces to back the shah and oppose the revolution. As a result,the extremist factions had the proof they needed to gain ascendancy over the moderates. Bytaking retribution against a superpower that had been perceived for years as an external threat,the extremists rallied the masses behind their cause.

From the vantage point of the United States, the hostage crisis had significant politicalconsequences. The inability of the Carter administration to fully appreciate the strength of theIslamic revival in Iran did irreparable harm to Carter's presidency. Further damage was donewhen a rescue mission had to be aborted in April, 1980. The failure of the operation known asEagle Claw angered military and civilian leaders in the United States. The economic sanctionsthat President Carter set in place against Iran served only to increase the determination of thehostage-takers. President Carter's unflagging support of the shah and his inability to resolve thehostage crisis probably contributed to Ronald Reagan's landslide presidential victory in 1980.

The effects of the hostage crisis in Iran extended far beyond the Carter administration. The hardfeelings that were created by the episode went a long way toward shaping U.S. foreign policy inthe Middle East. During the Iran-Iraq War, for example, the United States was unofficially onIraq's side and even engaged in sporadic firefights with Iran in 1988. During the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings, officials of the National Security Commission stated that it was theembarrassment from the ill-fated rescue operation in 1980 that provided the incentive for theexchange of arms for hostages. The hostage crisis left behind a legacy of resentment that crippledIranian-American relations for years.

Alan Brown

Further Reading
Bill, James A. The Shah, the Ayatollah, and the United States. New York: Foreign PolicyAssociation, 1988. One of the most complete accounts available of the events that led up to thetaking of the American hostages in Tehran. Unfortunately, does not include any informationregarding the treatment of the hostages during their 444-day ordeal.

Daugherty, William J. In the Shadow of the Ayatollah: A CIA Hostage in Iran. Annapolis, Md.:Naval Institute Press, 2001. Examination of U.S.-Iranian relations during the Cold War by a CIAagent who was taken hostage during the crisis. Presents a detailed report of his confinement.

Houghton, David Patrick. U.S. Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. New York:Cambridge University Press, 2001. Presents an analysis of the events based on informationobtained from interviews with key individuals from both sides of the crisis.

Jordan, Hamilton. Crisis. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1982. Chronicles the last year ofJimmy Carter's presidency, drawing on official documents and interviews to illustrate Jordan'srole in relocating the shah to Panama and his secret negotiations with the Khomeini governmentduring the hostage crisis. Benefits greatly from Jordan's firsthand involvement in the secretnegotiations.

Kennedy, Moorhead. The Ayatollah in the Cathedral: Reflections of a Hostage. New York: Hill& Wang, 1986. Memoir by the most widely known individual among the hostages. Attacks notonly the sadistic cruelty of the Iranian captors but also the arrogance of the U.S. government inWashington and in its embassies.

Kreisberg, Paul H., ed. American Hostages in Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis. New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press, 1985. Insightful work tells the story of the delicate negotiations in thewords of the key Americans, both inside and outside of government, who were intimatelyinvolved in the process of freeing the hostages.

Salinger, Pierre. America Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations. Garden City, N.Y.:Doubleday, 1981. Lacks the authority of Jordan's first-person narrative (cited above) but is moreobjective in its reporting of the delicate diplomatic procedures that resulted in the release of thehostages. The author was a news correspondent who reported on the hostage crisis.

See Also
Sept. 5-6, 1972: Arab Terrorists Murder Israelis at Munich Olympics; 1977-1981:Carter Makes Human Rights a Central Theme of Foreign Policy; Jan., 1978-1980: IranianRevolution; 1979-1985: Iran Uses Executions to Establish New Order; Fall, 1982: Pro-IranRadicals Form Hezbollah; Jan. 20, 1987: Waite Is Kidnapped in Lebanon; Feb. 14, 1989: IranIssues a Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie.