Iranian Students Storm Embassy: Hostage Crisis Begins

Several hundred Iranian university students scaled the walls of the American embassy compound in Tehran on November 4, 1979, overwhelmed the Marine guards, and seized 66 hostages in what they announced would be a brief occupation lasting "a few days." The crisis lasted 444 days, destroyed a presidency, reshaped American foreign policy, and defined the relationship between the United States and Iran for decades. The students called themselves Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam and acted without explicit authorization from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Islamic Revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi nine months earlier. Their stated demand was the return of the Shah, admitted to New York for cancer treatment, to face trial in Iran. When Khomeini endorsed the takeover, what began as a student protest became state policy. The embassy staff had shredded classified documents as the compound was breached, but the students painstakingly reassembled many of them, using the contents to accuse the United States of espionage. Thirteen hostages, mostly women and African Americans, were released within weeks. Six diplomats who escaped to the Canadian ambassador's residence were smuggled out in a CIA operation later dramatized in the film Argo. President Jimmy Carter's attempts to resolve the crisis defined his final year. Diplomatic negotiations stalled repeatedly. A military rescue attempt, Operation Eagle Claw, ended catastrophically in the Iranian desert on April 24, 1980, when a helicopter collided with a transport plane, killing eight servicemen. The debacle deepened public frustration and contributed heavily to Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan. The hostages were released minutes after Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981, a final humiliation timed for maximum effect.