The crisis began on November 4, 1979, when several hundred students partici-
pating in a demonstration stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took hostage all
sixty-six U.S. citizens there, most of them diplomats. A Marxist group had overrun
the embassy on February 14, only to be forced out by supporters of Ayatollah Ruhol-
lah Khomeini, who had just returned to Iran from years in exile.
It was unclear initially whether the November embassy takeover had the explicit
approval of Iran’s revolutionary government, which had been in power since the ouster
of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi at the beginning of the year. Regardless, Khomeini,
who had become the country’s dominant leader, quickly endorsed the embassy seizure,
thus escalating the diplomatic conflict and the danger of the episode developing into
a military clash between Iran and the United States. It soon became clear that Kho-
meini saw the situation as an opportunity to bolster domestic support for the Islamic
revolution, which had faced a backlash of opposition in previous months. Relatively
moderate prime minister Mehdi Bazargan resigned two days after the embassy seizure,
giving Khomeini’s faction total control of the new government (The Iranian Revolu-
tion, p. 379).
President Jimmy Carter responded by demanding the release of all the hostages
and making the issue a central focus of his foreign policy, inadvertently giving the
hostage takers additional leverage. On November 12, Carter ordered a ban on the
importation into the United States of oil from Iran; he also sought, and quickly
received, nearly universal diplomatic support from world capitals for his demand that
Iran release the hostages immediately. Khomeini ordered the release of thirteen of the
captives on November 17. All were black or female employees at the embassy and thus,
he said, probably were not spies, as he insisted the other embassy employees were.
The hostage crisis quickly settled into a stalemate, with each side accusing the
other of acting in bad faith. Carter and Khomeini personified the crisis, each playing
to a domestic constituency while trying to generate support and sympathy from a
broader international audience.
On November 20 on Tehran radio, Khomeini portrayed the embassy seizure as jus-
tified recompense for U.S. “oppression and mischief” in Iran. He specifically cited Wash-
ington’s long-term support for the shah and Carter’s decision the previous month to
allow the deposed shah into the United States for emergency medical treatment. Kho-
meini accused Carter of apparently being unaware or choosing to ignore that the shah
“is guilty, was oppressive, was a criminal and committed many crimes in this country,
caused much deprivation to this nation and imprisoned, exiled and killed its citizens.”
Carter made his first extended statements on the matter during a November 28
White House news conference, stating that “we will persist in our efforts, through
every means available, until every single American has been freed.” He also warned
that the Iranian government would suffer “grave consequences” if the hostages were
harmed, and he rejected Khomeini’s assertion that Iran’s historical grievances against
the United States justified the hostage taking.
For Khomeini and many Iranians, those grievances stood at the heart of the mat-
ter, but most Americans probably were only dimly aware, if knowledgeable at all, of
that history. For the students who occupied the embassy, the central event was U.S.
support for the military coup in August 1953 that ousted the government of Moham-
mad Mosaddeq, the prime minister who in 1951 had orchestrated the nationalization
of Iran’s oil industry and who the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration feared had
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