J.P. Vanisacker

Nov 4, 1979: Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. Fifty-two of them wouldn't come home for 444 days, and the crisis brought down a president. The anger behind it went back decades. In 1953, after Iran's elected prime minister took over the country's British-controlled oil industry, the CIA and British intelligence helped overthrow him and put the Shah back in full control. For the next 25 years the Shah ruled as a close American ally, buying billions in US weapons while his secret police jailed and tortured his opponents. In 1978 Iran rose up against him. In January 1979 the Shah fled the country, and the exiled cleric Ayatollah Khomeini came home to a hero's welcome. That October, when the US let the Shah into New York for cancer treatment, many Iranians were convinced Washington was planning another coup to put him back on the throne. On the morning of Nov 4, a few hundred students who called themselves followers of the Imam's line gathered outside the embassy in the rain. Some of the women had bolt cutters hidden under their robes. They cut the chain on the gate and poured in. The Marine guards were told not to open fire, to avoid a massacre. Inside, embassy staff rushed to shred and burn classified documents. Over the following months, the students painstakingly pieced the shredded strips back together and published them. The Americans were blindfolded, tied up, and paraded in front of cameras and screaming crowds. The top American diplomat, Bruce Laingen, happened to be at Iran's foreign ministry with two colleagues that morning. They were held there for the entire crisis. Khomeini praised the students and called the embassy a den of spies. Two weeks later he ordered the release of 13 hostages, women and Black Americans. Another man was released the next summer after falling seriously ill. The remaining 52 stayed. Six Americans had slipped out of a side building during the takeover. Canadian diplomats hid them in their homes for nearly three months. In January 1980, a CIA officer named Tony Mendez flew into Tehran and got them out by pretending they were a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a sci-fi movie. For the hostages, the days blurred together. They were moved from place to place, kept in solitary confinement, and sometimes faced mock executions, lined up in the middle of the night as if they were about to be shot. At home, the crisis took over American life. Bruce Laingen's wife, Penne, tied a yellow ribbon around an oak tree in her front yard, and soon yellow ribbons were everywhere. Walter Cronkite ended his newscasts by counting the days. ABC launched a late-night show about the crisis that became Nightline. Jimmy Carter froze billions in Iranian assets, cut off oil imports, and broke off relations. He mostly stopped campaigning for reelection and stayed in the White House. In April 1980, after months of failed negotiations, Carter approved a rescue mission called Operation Eagle Claw. Delta Force would fly secretly into Iran, meet helicopters at a desert landing site code-named Desert One, then hit Tehran. Dust storms and mechanical failures knocked out three of the eight helicopters. The mission was called off. As the force was pulling out, a helicopter crashed into a refueling plane. Eight American servicemen were killed. Iran put their burned remains on display. The disaster led the military to create a new command for special operations. That summer the Shah died in Egypt. In September Iraq invaded Iran, and Iran suddenly needed the money the US had frozen. Talks began through Algeria. On Nov 4, 1980, exactly one year after the embassy was seized, Carter lost the election to Ronald Reagan in a landslide. Carter spent his last days in office working almost without sleep to finish the deal. It was signed on Jan 19, 1981. The next day, the hostages were loaded onto planes at the Tehran airport, but Iran held them on the runway until Carter was no longer president. They took off minutes after Reagan was sworn in. Reagan announced it at his inaugural lunch. The next day, Carter flew to West Germany, as Reagan's envoy, to welcome them. New York threw them a ticker-tape parade. They had been held for 444 days. More than three decades later, Congress finally approved compensation for them and their families. Iran and the United States still have no diplomatic relations today.