Student followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini send shock waves across America when they storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The radical Islamic fundamentalists took 90 hostages. The students were enraged that the deposed Shah had been allowed to enter the United States for medical treatment and they threatened to murder hostages if any rescue was attempted. Days later, Iran’s provincial leader resigned, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s fundamentalist revolutionaries, took full control of the country—and the fate of the hostages.
Two weeks after the storming of the embassy, the Ayatollah began to release all non-U.S. captives, and all female and minority Americans, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by the United States government. The remaining 52 captives were left at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next 14 months.
President Jimmy Carter was unable to diplomatically resolve the crisis, and on April 24, 1980, he ordered a disastrous rescue mission in which eight U.S. military personnel were killed and no hostages rescued. Three months later, the former shah died of cancer in Egypt, but the crisis continued. In November 1980, Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. Soon after, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations finally began between the United States and Iran.
On January 20, 1981—the day of Reagan’s inauguration—the United States freed almost $3 billion in frozen Iranian assets and promised $5 billion more in financial aid. Minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the hostages flew out of Iran on an Algerian airliner, ending their 444-day ordeal. The next day, Jimmy Carter flew to West Germany to greet them on their way home.
What the article fails to mention is the revolution of 1979 was in response to the American and British 28 Mordad coup d’état in 1953 known as Operation Ajax. The Prime minister Mossadegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP) and to limit the company’s control over Iranian oil reserves. He was then illegally overthrown by the US and Britan.
And the Shah was imposed upon the country. Over the next 26 years, his reign of terror resulted in tens if not hundreds of thousands dead, imprisoned, tortured, brutalized, etc. all while the US funneled huge tons of cash into the country and provided the Shah’s secret police (the Savak) with all the training they needed in torture techniques, etc.
The revolution of 79 was as inevitable as day follows night, and the US and the UK were 100% to blame. Countless individuals from the US and Britain should have been forced to stand trial in Iran for their crimes (including Eisenhower), but of course that never happened.
It is ironic that the misery and murder that envelopes the Middle East is due to their wealth in oil. They would be much better off if their land was devoid of all resources and wealth that others covet.
God bless COL Leland Holland and his family.
Lucky me, I had the privilege to salute him the day he was to muster out of the Army at the old Vint Hill Farms Station, just before he passed on.