How Do You Understand The Iranian Hostage Crisis?
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage-eventually holding 52 of them for a whopping 444 days. This event had profound implications for Iran, which had just undergone a revolution, as well as for the U.S., which was confronted with an intractable international situation. Here’s how the hostage crisis began, and how it finally ended. The U.S. had a long tradition of interfering in Iranian affairs. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had threatened to nationalize Iran’s oil fields. In Mossadegh’s place, the U.S. set up Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had a pro-Western orientation. However, the Shah’s efforts to modernize Iran over the next two decades provoked a backlash from Muslim traditionalists, who finally deposed and exiled him in 1979. The U.S. admitted the Shah for medical treatment. Ill with cancer, the Shah sought refuge in the U.S. When it was grant
