Iran hostage crisis

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Iranian militants escort a blindfolded U.S. hostage to the media.^[1]

The Iran hostage crisis (Persian: تصرف سفارت آمریکا) was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 U.S. diplomats were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of students took over the American embassy in support of Iran's revolution.^[2]

In Iran, the incident was seen by many as a blow against U.S. influence in Iran and its support of the recently fallen Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been restored to power by a CIA-funded coup in 1953 and who had recently been allowed into the United States for cancer treatment. In the United States, the hostage-taking was widely seen as an outrage violating a centuries-old principle of international law granting diplomats immunity from arrest and diplomatic compounds sovereignty in the territory of the host country they occupy.^[3]

The ordeal reached a climax when the United States military attempted a rescue operation, Operation Eagle Claw, on April 24, 1980, which resulted in an aborted mission and the deaths of eight American military men. The crisis ended with the signing of the Algiers Accords in Algeria on January 19, 1981. The hostages were formally released into United States custody the following day, just minutes after the new American president Ronald Reagan was sworn in.

In America, the crisis is thought by some political analysts to be the primary reason for U.S. President Jimmy Carter's defeat in the November 1980 presidential election.^[4] In Iran, the crisis is thought to have strengthened the prestige of the Ayatollah Khomeini and consolidated the political hold of radical anti-American forces who supported the hostage taking. The crisis also marked the beginning of American legal action, or sanctions, that economically separated Iran from America. Sanctions blocked all property within U.S. jurisdiction owned by the Central Bank and Government of Iran.^[5]

[edit] Background

Further information: Operation Ajax and Iranian Revolution

For several decades, the United States had been an ally and backer of Iran’s Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. During World War II, Allied powers Britain and the Soviet Union occupied Iran to prevent it from allying with the Axis Powers, and forced the reigning monarch, Reza Shah, to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad.^[6] After WWII and during the Cold War, Iran allied itself with the U.S. against the Soviet Union, Iran’s neighbor and occasional enemy and occupier. America provided the Shah with military and economic aid.

In the midst of this era, however, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, an Iranian nationalist and political opponent of the Shah, nationalized Iran’s foreign-owned and -managed oil producer, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The nationalization was highly popular in Iran, and a forerunner of similar third world nationalist movements. The company’s furious British owners withdrew employees and ceased oil production and royalty payments to the Iranian government which seriously harmed Iran's economy. In its Cold War solidarity with the UK the American government refused to break the UK boycott and insisted Iran negotiated with Britain. As domestic disatisfaction grew, so did American concern about Soviet influence in Iran. Working with Iranian opponents of Mossadegh, in 1953 the CIA and British intelligence launched Operation Ajax, orchestrating a coup d’état to overthrow the elected prime minister and replace him with a pro-Western one. In subsequent decades this foreign intervention, along with other economic, cultural and political issues, united opposition against the Shah and led to his overthrow. The Shah’s regime fell in the Iranian revolution of 1978-79, and the Shah left the country in January 1979.^[7][8][9]

The Carter administration attempted to mitigate the damage by finding a new relationship with the de facto Iranian government and by continuing military cooperation in hopes that the situation would stabilize. On October 22, 1979, however, the U.S. permitted the Shah, who was ill with cancer, to come to the Mayo Clinic for medical treatment.

The American embassy in Tehran had vigorously opposed the request, understanding the political delicacy, but after pressure from influential figures including former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Council on Foreign Relations chairman David Rockefeller, the Carter administration decided to grant the Shah’s request.^[10]

Among the revolutionary factions, the Shah's admission to the US intensified their anti-Americanism and spawned rumors of another U.S.-backed coup and re-installation of the Shah. Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini heightened rhetoric against the “Great Satan”, the United States, talking of what he called “evidence of American plotting.”^[11] Khomeini had been exiled by the Shah in 1964, living outside Iran for 15 years.

The hostage takers were “convinced that the embassy was a center of opposition to the new government” and thus their action was connected to the 1953 U.S.-backed coup against the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Mosaddeq.

"You have no right to complain, because you took our whole country hostage in 1953.”

said one of the hostage takers to Bruce Laingen, chief U.S. diplomat in Iran at the time.^[12] Some Iranians were concerned that the U.S. was plotting another coup against their country in 1979 from the American embassy and wanted to prevent it. ^[13]

A later study found that there had been no plots for the overthrow of the revolutionaries by the United States, and that a CIA intelligence gathering mission at the embassy was “notably ineffectual, gathering little information and hampered by the fact that none of the agents spoke the local language, Persian.” Its work was “routine, prudent espionage conducted at diplomatic missions everywhere.”^[14]

It is also argued that connections of Chase Manhattan Bank and its chairman, Rockefeller, to the Shah played a role in the hostage-taking.^[15][16]

[edit] Planning

The seizure of the American embassy was initially planned in September 1979 by Iranian politician Ebrahim Asgharzadeh. He consulted with the heads of the Islamic associations of Tehran’s main universities, including the University of Tehran, Sharif University of Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology (Polytechnic of Tehran) and Iran University of Science and Technology.

Asgharzadeh later said there were five students at the first meeting, two of whom wanted to target the Soviet embassy because the USSR was “a Marxist and anti-God regime.” But two others, Mirdamadi and Habibolah Bitaraf, supported Asgharzadeh’s chosen target—the United States. "Our aim was to object against the American government by going to their embassy and occupying it for several hours," Asgharzadeh said. "Announcing our objections from within the occupied compound would carry our message to the world in a much more firm and effective way."^[17] Mirdamadi told an interviewer, "we intended to detain the diplomats for a few days, maybe one week, but no more."^[18] Masoumeh Ebtekar, spokewoman for the Iranian students during the crisis, said that those who rejected Asgharzadeh's plan did not participate in the subsequent events.,^[19]

The group denied that Khomeini had incited the plan,^[20] but they wanted to inform him through Ayatollah Musavi Khoeyniha. They said they thought he already knew their plan. Khoeyniha, however, was unable to inform Khomeini, who only became aware of the plan after the hostages were taken. Later, Khomeini supported the seizure and called it "the second revolution" and a take-over of the "American spy den in Tehran."

One week after the Shah was admitted (22 Oct. 1979) into the United States, Khomeini urged his supporters to demonstrate against United States and Israeli interests. Khomeini denounced the American government as the "Great Satan" and "Enemy of Islam."

The takeover was aided by revolutionaries who observed the security procedures of the U.S. Marine guards from nearby rooftops overlooking the embassy. They also used experiences from the recent revolution, during which the U.S. embassy grounds were briefly occupied. Notably, protest crowds outside the fence were increasingly common, and Iranian police had become less and less helpful to the embassy staff.

[edit] Takeover

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Documents Seized from the US Embassy in Tehran

Around 6:30 a.m. on November 4, the ringleaders gathered between 300 and 500 selected students, thereafter known as Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, and briefed them on the battle plan. A female student was given a pair of metal cutters to break the chains locking the embassy's gates, and she hid them beneath her chador.^[21]

The crowd overran the soldiers and staff and paraded them blindfolded in front of photographers. Six American diplomats avoided capture when the embassy was seized and found refuge at the nearby Canadian and Swedish embassies in Tehran for three months. They fled Iran using Canadian passports on January 28, 1980.^[22]

[edit] 444 days hostage

A group photograph of the former hostages in the hospital. The 52 hostages are spending a few days in the hospital after their release from Iran prior to their departure for the United States.

The hostage-takers, declaring their solidarity with other "oppressed minorities" and "the special place of women in Islam," released 13 women and Americans of African descent in the middle of November 1979. One more hostage, Richard Queen, was released in July 1980 after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The remaining 52 hostages were held captive until January 1981.

Although the hostage takers declared that the hostages were actually "guests of the Ayatollah", the "guests'" treatment was not always kind. They were often paraded blindfolded before local crowds and television cameras, "experienced long periods of solitary confinement, and for months were forbidden to speak to one another."^[14]

The initial takeover plan was to hold the embassy for only a few hours, but it soon changed. Khomeini made no comment on the occupation for several days, waiting first to gauge American reaction to the hostage taking, which he feared might be violent.^[23] It was not. Some attribute the Iranian decision not to release the hostages quickly to the soft line of U.S. President Jimmy Carter; his immediate response was to appeal for the release of the hostages on humanitarian grounds and to share his hopes of a strategic anti-communist alliance with the Islamic Republic.^[24] Iran's moderate prime minister Mehdi Bazargan and his cabinet resigned under pressure just days after the event.

In the United States, the crisis led to daily news updates.^[25] Public opinion was almost unanimously outraged against the perpetrators' taking hostages. The action was seen "not just as a diplomatic affront," but as a "declaration of war on diplomacy itself."^[26] Carter applied economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran: oil imports from Iran were ended on November 12, 1979, and through the issuance of Executive Order 12170, around US$8 billion of Iranian assets in the U.S. were frozen by the Office of Foreign Assets Control on November 14. Many Iranians in the U.S. were also expelled. In early December, Carter would also meet with 16 consultants, experts in their respective fields all of which related to Cultures in and around Iran. Of these was professor Wadie Jwaideh, chairman of Near Eastern languages and literatures at Indiana University.

The Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line justified taking the hostages as retaliation for the admission of the Shah into the U.S., and they demanded that the Shah be returned to Iran for trial and execution. The U.S. maintained that the Shah, who died less than a year later in July 1980, had come to America only for medical attention. The group's other demands included that the U.S. government apologize for its interference in the internal affairs of Iran and for the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadeq, and that Iran's frozen assets in the U.S. be released. Revolutionary teams displayed secret documents taken from the embassy, sometimes painstakingly reconstructed after shredding,^[27] to buttress their claim that "the Great Satan" (the U.S.) was trying to destabilize the new regime, and that Iranian moderates were in league with the U.S.

The duration of the hostages' captivity has been blamed on internal Iranian revolutionary politics. As Ayatollah Khomeini told Iran's president:

This action has many benefits. ... This has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put the constitution to the people's vote without difficulty, and carry out presidential and parliamentary elections.^[28]

Theocratic Islamists, as well as leftist political groups and figures like radical leftist People's Mujahedin of Iran,^[29] supported the taking of American hostages as an attack on "American imperialism" and its alleged Iranian "tools of the West." By embracing the hostage-taking under the slogan "America can't do a thing," Khomeini rallied support and deflected criticism from his controversial Islamic theocratic constitution, which was due for a referendum vote in less than one month.^[30] Following the successful referendum, both radical leftists and theocrats continued to use the issue of alleged pro-Americanism to suppress their opponents, the relatively moderate political forces, which included the Iranian Freedom Movement, National Front, Grand Ayatollah Shari'atmadari,^[31] and later President Abolhassan Banisadr. In particular, carefully selected diplomatic dispatches and reports discovered at the embassy and released by the hostage takers led to the disempowerment and resignations of moderate figures^[32] such as Premier Mehdi Bazargan. The political danger in Iran of any move seen as accommodating America, along with the failed rescue attempt, delayed a negotiated release. After the hostages were released, radical leftists and theocrats turned on each other, with the stronger theocratic group decimating the left.

A man holding a sign during a protest of the crisis in Washington, D.C. in 1979. The sign reads "Deport all Iranians" and "Get the hell out of my country" on its forefront, and "Release all Americans now" on its back.

[edit] Canadian Caper

On the day the hostages were seized, six American diplomats evaded capture and remained in hiding at the Swedish and Canadian embassies. In 1979, the Canadian Parliament held a secret session for the first time since World War II in order to pass special legislation allowing Canadian passports to be issued to some American citizens so that they could escape. Six American diplomats boarded a flight to Zürich, Switzerland, on January 28, 1980. Their escape and rescue from Iran by Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor has come to be known as the Canadian Caper.^[33]

[edit] Laingen dispatches

During the hostage crisis, several foreign diplomats and ambassadors including Taylor came to visit the American hostages. The diplomats and ambassadors helped the American government stay in contact with the American hostages. Through these meetings with foreign governments, the "Laingen dispatches," made by hostage Bruce Laingen, were conveyed to the American government.

[edit] Rescue attempts

Further information: Operation Eagle Claw

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Rejecting Iranian demands, Carter approved an ill-fated secret rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw. Late in the afternoon of April 24, eight RH-53D helicopters flew from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz toward a remote landing site (really just a desert road) serving as an airstrip in the Great Salt Desert of Eastern Iran, near Tabas. Early the next morning six of the eight RH-53D helicopters met up with several waiting C-130 transport and refueling airplanes at the landing site and refueling area, designated "Desert One" by the mission.

Of the two helicopters that did not make it to Desert One, one suffered avionics failures en route and returned to the USS Nimitz, and the other had an indication that one of its main rotor blades was fractured, and was abandoned in the desert en route to Desert One. Its crew was seen and retrieved by another helicopter that continued to Desert One. The helicopters maintained strict radio silence under orders for the entire flight, an issue which impacted their ability to maintain a cohesive flying unit while en route, as they all arrived separately and behind schedule. The strict radio silence also prevented them from requesting permission to fly above the sandstorm as the C-130s had done, and they flew the entire route at hazardous low levels, even while inside the sandstorm and with limited field of vision and erratic instrumentation.

The mission plan called for a minimum of six helicopters but of the six that made it to Desert One, one had a failed primary hydraulics system and had flown on the secondary hydraulics system for the previous four hours.

The failing helicopter's crew wanted to continue, but due to the increased risk of not having a backup hydraulic system during flight, the helicopter squadron's commander decided to ground the helicopter. The Delta commander, Col. Beckwith, then recommended the mission be aborted and his recommendation was approved, President Carter being the commander of the mission. As the helicopters repositioned themselves for refueling, one helicopter landed on top of a C-130 fuel bird and crashed, killing eight U.S. servicemen and injuring several more.

After the mission and its failure were made known, Khomeini's prestige skyrocketed in Iran as he credited divine intervention on behalf of Islam for the result.^[34] In America, Carter made a television address on April 25th about the attempted rescue operation, which further damaged his political popularity and prospects for being reelected in 1980.

A second rescue attempt that was planned but never attempted used highly modified YMC-130H Hercules aircraft. Outfitted with rocket thrusters fore and aft to allow an extremely short landing and takeoff in a soccer stadium, three aircraft were modified under a rushed super-secret program known as Operation Credible Sport. One aircraft crashed during a demonstration at Duke Field at Eglin Air Force Base Auxiliary Field 3 on October 29, 1980, when its landing braking rockets were fired too soon. The misfire caused a hard touchdown that tore off the starboard wing and started a fire; all on board survived. The impending change in the White House following the November election led to an abandonment of this project. The two surviving airframes were returned to regular duty with the rocket packages removed. One is on display at the Museum of Aviation located next to Robins Air Force Base in Georgia.

The aforementioned failed rescue attempt led to the creation of the 160th S.O.A.R., a helicopter aviation special forces group in the United States Army.

[edit] Final months

At the end of the Iran hostage crisis, Vice President George H. W. Bush and other VIPs wait to welcome hostages home

The hostages disembark Freedom One, an Air Force VC-137 Stratoliner aircraft, upon their arrival at the base.

This section does not cite any references or sources. (January 2008) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The death of the Shah on July 27 and the invasion of Iran by Iraq in September 1980 made Iran more receptive to the idea of resolving the hostage crisis. Despite losing the November 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, President Jimmy Carter, in the final days of his office, negotiated the release of the hostages through Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Algerian intermediaries and members of the Iranian government.

In the closing days of Carter's Presidency, Algerian diplomat Abdulkarim Ghuraib opened fruitful, albeit biased, negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. This resulted in the "Algiers Accords" of January 19, 1981, which entailed Iran's commitment to free the hostages immediately.

Point I: Non-Intervention in Iranian Affairs, "The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's internal affairs." Other provisions of the Algiers Accords were the unfreezing of $8 billion of Iranian assets and immunity from lawsuits Iran might have faced.

On January 20, 1981, minutes after Reagan was sworn in as President, the hostages were formally released into U.S. custody, having spent 444 days in captivity. The hostages were flown to Algeria as a symbolic gesture for the help of that government in resolving the crisis. The flight continued to Rhein-Main Air Base in West Germany, where former President Carter, acting as emissary, received them. After medical check-ups and debriefings, they took a second flight to Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, with a refueling stop in Shannon, Ireland, where they were greeted by a large crowd. From Newburgh they travelled by bus to the United States Military Academy, receiving a heroes' welcome all along the route. Ten days after their release, the former hostages were given a ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes in New York City.

[edit] Aftermath

A defaced Great Seal of the United States at the former U.S. embassy, Tehran, Iran, as it appears today

In Iran the crisis was a failure for the Islamic Republic in some respects. Iran lost international support for its war against Iraq, and the settlement was considered almost wholly favorable to the United States since it did not meet any of Iran's original demands.^[35] But the crisis strengthened Iranian radicals who supported the hostage taking. Anti-Americanism became even more intense, and anti-American rhetoric continued unabated.^[36] Radicals such as Musavi-Khoeniha and Behzad Nabavi^[37] were left in a stronger position, while those associated or accused of association with America were removed from the political picture.

In America, gifts were showered upon the hostages upon their return, including lifetime passes to any minor league or Major League Baseball game.^[38]

In 2000, the hostages and their families tried to sue Iran, unsuccessfully, under the Antiterrorism Act. They originally won the case when Iran failed to provide a defense, but the U.S. State Department tried to put an end to the suit, fearing that it would make international relations difficult. As a result, a federal judge ruled that nothing could be done to repay the damages the hostages faced because of the agreement the U.S. made when the hostages were freed.^{[citation needed]}

The US embassy building is used by Iran's government and its affiliated groups. The Guardian reported in 2006 that a group called The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign used the US embassy to recruit "martyrdom seekers", volunteers to carry out operations against Western and Jewish targets. Mohammad Samadi, a spokesman for the group, signed up several hundred volunteers in a few days.^[39]

[edit] October Surprise conspiracy theory

Further information: October surprise conspiracy

The October Surprise theory refers to a purported deal between high-level Reagan campaign operatives (such as campaign manager and future CIA Director William J. Casey) and representatives of the Iranian government to delay the release of the hostages until after the November 1980 U.S. elections. Although investigations by the United States Senate and House of Representatives in the 1990s declared the allegations to be unfounded, the conspiracy's existence or lack thereof remains a subject of debate. The exact nature of the allegations lies in a potential violation of the International Commerce Acts of 1798, which prohibit any private citizen or party from negotiating with a foreign power in matters of national policy or military action. It is alleged by political opponents that the Reagan campaign, or one of Reagan's election campaign staffers, communicated with the Iranian government and asked them to extend the hostage crisis long enough to ensure that he won the 1980 elections. The main cause for suspicion was the seeming coincidence of his inauguration and the hostages' release six minutes after Reagan was sworn into office on January 20, 1981, as well as the Reagan administration's later decision to provide arms to the anti-U.S. Iranian government, allegedly in return not for freeing the hostages, but for delaying their release.^[40]

However, special ops personnel involved in the preparations for the second rescue attempt believed that incoming President Ronald Reagan was involved in the planning and timing of the second rescue attempt, and that these intentions were either implied or made known to the de facto Iranian government, leading to the hostages' release just minutes after Reagan's inauguration. This was reinforced by the fact that the personnel involved were on alert status, ready to go at a moment's notice, in the days leading up to the inauguration, and that the required equipment was already packed up and waiting to be shipped. Thus, a perceived and possibly communicated threat of invasion could also have influenced the timing of the hostage release.^[41].^[42]

[edit] Hostages

November 4, 1979 - January 20, 1981 - 66 original captives - 63 from and held at Embassy, three from and held at Foreign Ministry Office.

At least three of the hostages were operatives of the CIA.^[14]

Thirteen hostages were released from November 19-20, 1979, and one was released on July 11, 1980. Fifty-two remaining hostages endured 444 days of captivity until their release (announced across the Capitol grounds twenty minutes after the swearing in of the new President) on Reagan's Inauguration Day, January 20, 1981.

[edit] Six diplomats who evaded capture

Further information: Canadian Caper

• Robert Anders, 34 - Consular Officer
• Mark J. Lijek, 29 - Consular Officer
• Cora A. Lijek, 25 - Consular Assistant
• Henry L. Schatz, 31 - Agriculture Attaché
• Joseph D. Stafford, 29 - Consular Officer
• Kathleen F. Stafford, 28 - Consular Assistant

[edit] 13 hostages released

From November 19-20, 1979, thirteen women and American personnel of African descent that had been captured and held hostage were released:

• Kathy Gross, 22 - Secretary
• Sgt. James Hughes, 30 - USAF Administrative Manager
• Lillian Johnson, 32 - Secretary
• Sgt. Ladell Maples, 23 - USMC Embassy Guard
• Elizabeth Montagne, 42 - Secretary
• Sgt. William Quarles, 23 - USMC Embassy Guard
• Lloyd Rollins, 40 - Administrative Officer
• Capt. Neal (Terry) Robinson, 30 - Administrative Officer
• Terri Tedford, 24 - Secretary
• Sgt. Joseph Vincent, 42 - USAF Administrative Manager
• Sgt. David Walker, 25 - USMC Embassy guard
• Joan Walsh, 33 - Secretary
• Cpl. Wesley Williams, 24 - USMC Embassy Guard

[edit] Richard I. Queen released

On July 11, 1980, 28-year-old Vice Consul Richard I. Queen, who had been captured and held hostage, was released because of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. (Died August 14, 2002.)

[edit] 52 remaining hostages released

The following fifty-two remaining hostages were held captive until January 20, 1981.

[edit] Servicemen awarded

For their service during the hostage crisis, the US military later awarded the 20 servicemen who were among the hostages the Defense Meritorious Service Medal. The only hostage serviceman not to be issued the medal was Staff Sgt. Joseph Subic, Jr. The reason given was that Subic did not behave under stress the way noncommissioned officers are expected to act[1], i.e. he cooperated with the hostage takers according to other hostages.^{[citation needed]}

For their part in the mission, the Humanitarian Service Medal was awarded to the servicemen of Joint Task Force (JTF) 1-79 (the planning authority for Operation Rice Bowl/Eagle Claw) who participated in the rescue attempt.

Also, the USAF special ops component of the mission was awarded the AF Outstanding Unit award for that year for performing their part of the mission flawlessly, to include accomplishing the evacuation of the entire Desert One site after the accident and under extreme conditions.

[edit] Civilian hostages

A little-noted sidebar to the crisis was that a small number of hostages were not connected to the diplomatic staff. All had been released by late 1981.

• Mohi Sobhani, an Iranian-American engineer and a member of the Bahá'í Faith. Released 2/4/1981. (Died 7/12/2005)
• Zia Nassery/Nassri, an Afghan-American. Released 2/4/1981.
• Cynthia Dwyer, an American reporter, was eventually charged with espionage and expelled 2/10/1981.
• Electronic Data Systems employees Paul Chiapparone and Bill Gaylord rescued by Ross Perot-funded operation (see Arthur D. Simons) in 1979.
• Four British missionaries

[edit] Notable hostage takers

• Mohsen Mirdamadi, MP
• Masoumeh Ebtekar, translator

[edit] See also

• 2006 US raid on Iranian diplomats
• 1992 US Kidnapping of Iranian Businessman
• US attack on Iranian consular office in Arbil
• Baghdad kidnapping of Iranian diplomat (February 2007)
• Iran Air Flight 655
• Iranian diplomats kidnapping (1982)
• List of hostage crises
• Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam (2006)
• International crisis
• Controversies surrounding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• October surprise conspiracy
• Iran-Contra affair
• Hussein Sheikholeslam
• Student Day in Iran
• Haleh Esfandiari

[edit] Notes

CNN- Former hostages allege Iran's new president was captor

[edit] References

• Bakhash, Shaul, The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution, Basic Books, 1984
• Moin, Baqer, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah, Thomas Dunne Books, c2000
• Ebtekar,Masoumeh and Fred Reed (January 20, 2001). Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture (Paperback), Publisher: Talonbooks; ISBN 0-88922-443-9
• 444 Days to Freedom: What Really Happened in Iran (1997). DVD UPC 033909253390

[edit] Further reading

• Ebtekar, Masoumeh; Fred Reed (2000). Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture. Burnaby, BC: Talonbooks. ISBN 0-88922-443-9. 
• Stewart, James (1983). The Partners: Inside America's Most Powerful Law Firms. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-42023-2. 
• Engelmayer, Sheldon D. (1981). Hostage: a Chronicle of the 444 Days in Iran. New York: Caroline House Publishing. ISBN 0-898-03084-6. 

[edit] External links

• Video Archive of Hostage Crisis
• The Memory Hole hosts a gallery of photographs taken from inside the U.S. Embassy during the crisis.
• List of hostages and casualties
• Remembering the Iran hostage crisis, BBC's interview with Ebrahim Asgeh, a hostage-taker, and Bruce Laingen, a captive
• Hostage list source
• "Learning to Keep a Secret"
• Documents seized from the US Embassy in Tehran
• The Hostage Rescue Attempt as remembered by a Marine who was off Iran for that mission, with history leading up to the crisis, the events of that time of Crisis including the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan, and the Rescue Mission