Iran Hostage Crisis

December 18, 2015 - Congress passes a budget bill that includes a provision authorizing each of the 53 hostages to receive $10,000 for each day they were held captive. In addition, spouses and children will separately receive a one-time payment of $600,000.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/world/meast/iran-hostage-crisis-fast-facts/

January 28, 1980 - Six American embassy employees, who avoided capture and hid in the homes of Canadian Embassy officers, flee Iran. In 1997 it is revealed that, along with the Canadian government, the CIA made the escape possible.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/world/meast/iran-hostage-crisis-fast-facts/

November 5, 1979 - The Iranian government cancels military treaties with the US and the Soviet Union, treaties that would permit US or Soviet military intervention.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/world/meast/iran-hostage-crisis-fast-facts/

After the hostages were released, they met with President Jimmy Carter. hostage, said, "It was not a warm welcome" --William Daugherty felt they were left unprotected in the embassy Carter went around to hug all the hostages, and many remained still with their arms at their sides and did not return his hug

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/27/world/ac-six-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-iran-hostage-crisis/

The U.S. Embassy in Tehran warned Washington the embassy would be attacked.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/27/world/ac-six-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-iran-hostage-crisis/

conflict is often described as the United States first brush with political Islam.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/27/world/ac-six-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-iran-hostage-crisis/

hostages were beaten and tortured, and even underwent a mock execution.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/27/world/ac-six-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-iran-hostage-crisis/

British and American corporations had controlled the bulk of Iran's petroleum reserves almost since their discovery-a profitable arrangement that they had no desire to change. However, in 1951 Iran's newly elected prime minister, a European-educated nationalist named Muhammad Mossadegh, announced a plan to nationalize the country's oil industry.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

By the 1970s, many Iranians were fed up with the Shah's government. In protest, they turned to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a radical cleric whose revolutionary Islamist movement seemed to promise a break from the past and a turn toward greater autonomy for the Iranian people In July of 1979, the revolutionaries succeeded in forcing the shah to disband his government and flee to Egypt The Ayatollah installed a militant Islamist government in its place.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

For the C.I.A. and oil interests, the 1953 coup was a success. In fact, it served as a model for other covert operations during the Cold War, such as the 1954 government takeover in Guatemala and the failed intervention in Cuba in 1961.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

In April 1980, frustrated with the slow pace of diplomacy (and over the objections of several of his advisers), Carter decided to launch a risky military rescue mission known as Operation Eagle Claw. supposed to send an elite rescue team into the embassy compound. However, a severe desert sandstorm on the day of the mission caused several helicopters to malfunction, including one that veered into a large transport plane during takeoff. Eight American servicemen were killed in the accident, and Operation Eagle Claw was aborted.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

In response to these policies, the American C.I.A. and the British intelligence service devised a secret plan to overthrow Mossadegh and replace him with a leader who would be more receptive to Western interests.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

It was more than just Shan medical care. But it was the Iranian Student revolutionaries, and to break free from Iran's past, and an end to the american interference

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

Muhammad was removed from office and the new government was installed in August 1953

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

On Election Day, one year and two days after the hostage crisis began, Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

On January 21, 1981, just a few hours after Ronald Reagan delivered his inaugural address, the remaining hostages were released. They had been in captivity for 444 days.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

On November 4, just after the Shah arrived in New York, a group of pro-Ayatollah students smashed the gates and scaled the walls of the American embassy in Tehran.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

Re-election President Carter's inability to resolve the problem made him look like a weak and ineffectual leader. At the same time, his intense focus on bringing the hostages home kept him away from the campaign trail.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

Rumors even circulated that Reagan's campaign staff negotiated with the Iranians to be sure that the hostages would not be released before the election, an event that would surely have given Carter a crucial boost. (Reagan himself always denied these allegations.)

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

The Shah turned out to be a brutal, arbitrary dictator whose secret police (known as the SAVAK) tortured and murdered thousands of people. Meanwhile, the Iranian government spent billions of dollars on American-made weapons while the Iranian economy suffered.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

The Shah's government was secular, anti-communist and pro-Western. In exchange for tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid, he returned 80 percent of Iran's oil reserves to the Americans and the British.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

The United States, fearful of stirring up hostilities in the Middle East, did not come to the defense of its old ally. (For one thing, President Carter, aware of the Shah's terrible record in that department, was reluctant to defend him.)

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

The cause of this action was President Jimmy Carter's decision to allow Iran's deposed Shah, a pro-Western autocrat who had been expelled from his country some months before, to come to the United States for cancer treatment

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

The new leader was a member of Iran's royal family named Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

There were years of tension prior to the hostage crisis, and many intense conflicts with oil

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

They were blindfolded and paraded in front of TV cameras and jeering crowds. They were not allowed to speak or read, and they were rarely permitted to change clothes. Throughout the crisis there was a frightening uncertainty about their fate: The hostages never knew whether they were going to be tortured, murdered or set free.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

a 14th hostage developed health problems and was likewise sent home. By midsummer 1980, 52 hostages remained in the embassy compound.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

in October 1979 President Carter agreed to allow the exiled leader to enter the U.S. for treatment of an advanced malignant lymphoma. His decision was humanitarian, not political; nevertheless, as one American later noted, it was like throwing "a burning branch into a bucket of kerosene." Anti-American sentiment in Iran exploded

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

no discernible effect on the Ayatollah's anti-American stance; neither did economic sanctions such as the seizure of Iranian assets in the United States

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

they seized 66 hostages, mostly diplomats and embassy employees. After a short period of time, 13 of these hostages were released. (For the most part, these 13 were women, African-Americans and citizens of countries other than the U.S.-people who, Khomeini argued, were already subject to "the oppression of American society.")

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

was also a way to raise the intra- and international profile of the revolution's leader, the anti-American cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

"No one can know how much pressure there was on Jimmy to do something," Rosalynn Carter recalled. "I would go out and campaign and come back and say, 'Why don't you do something?' And he said, 'What would you want me to do?' I said, 'Mine the harbors.' He said, 'Okay, suppose I mine the harbors, and they decide to take one hostage out every day and kill him. What am I going to do then?'"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/

For the first few months, the American public rallied around Carter, who had clearly made freeing the hostages his number one priority. "Having a crisis, where you have to stay in Washington and deal with this crisis all the time, and be a statesman, can work to your advantage -- rally around the president in a crisis," says political scientist Betty Glad. "What Carter didn't foresee is, this enormous investment means you have to have a resolution to the issue.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/

First, Carter cancelled oil imports from Iran, then he expelled a number of Iranians from the U.S., followed by freezing about $8 billion of Iranian assets in the U.S.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2021.html

Iran's demands to the U.S included the Shah's return to Iran, a demand for an apology for American involvement in Iran, including the coup in 1953, and a promise to steer clear of Iranian affairs in the future

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2021.html

Upon the death of the shah in July (which neutralized one demand) and the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September (necessitating weapons acquisition), Iran became more amenable to reopening negotiations for the hostages' release

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2021.html

Along with a roadblock with the path of U.S.-Iranian relations, it was also widely believed to have contributed to Carter's defeat by Reagan in the 1980 presidential election

https://www.britannica.com/event/Iran-hostage-crisis

President Carter felt the plight of the hostages deeply, and considered their safe return his personal responsibility. On November 11, he embargoed Iranian oil

(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/)

For twenty years Reza Shah and his regime was looked at by a man names Mossadegh to be an enemy of Iran, However when Shah was gone and Mossadegh took rule, and aimed to eliminate the British and Anglo Iranian Oil Company.

Page 47, All the Shah's Men