|
The Iran Hostage Crisis was a 444 day problem that was caused under the presidential power of Jimmy
Carter which student proxies of the new Islamic regime in Iran, took 52 diplomats and citizens of the United States as hostages.
| Iran |
|
| United States |
|
On November 1, 1979, Iran's new leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged his people to protest against
United States and Israeli interests. Khomeini was of course himself anti-American. After his speech, thousands of people gathered
around the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and started to protest. The Iranian police were helpless in the situation and it only got
worse.
On November 4, around 500 Iranian students, who called themselves the Muslim Students Following
the Line of the Imam, seized the main embassy building. The guard of Marines around the embassy were severally outnumbered
and out of the 90 occupants in the embassy, 66 of them were taken captive. 14 women, African Americans, and non-US captives
were released leaving 52 hostages. Ayatollah Khomeini stated that he was not aware of the students' plan but applauded
the action afterwards. During the time that the hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran were being held, several foreign
government diplomats and ambassadors came to visit the American hostages. Ken Taylor of Canada was one of these ambassadors
who visited the hostages. The students justified taking the hostages as retaliation for the admission of the Shah into the
U.S., and demanded the Shah be returned to Iran for a trial. The new Iranian regime believed the Shah was in the U.S. so that
the U.S. could carry out another coup d'etat in Iran; the U.S. claimed he had come there only to seek medical attention (the
Shah was suffering from cancer, which led to his death in 1980). Iranian students demanded that the U.S. government apologize
for its interference in the internal affairs of Iran and for the overthrow of Prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. They also
demanded that Iran's assets in the U.S. be released. The money had been frozen by the U.S. government in response to the hostage
taking. The U.S. government refused to accept the demands.
|
| http://www.theodora.com/flags/burning_2/95/flag_burning_95.html |
|
| http://www.theodora.com/flags/burning_2/95/flag_burning_95.html |
|
