Beginning in 1953, when the United States helped to overthrow the
popular Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq (1882–1967),
Iran condemned the United States as an oppressive power that interfered
in foreign governments. The United States supported the new, unpopular government in Iran, which only worsened the country’s feelings toward the superpower.
Relations between the two countries were particularly strained in
1977. The Iranian economy, which had boomed between 1973 and 1975, began to deteriorate rapidly. There was a huge gap in the distribution of income between those who lived in the country, who were
wretchedly poor, and those in the cities. A shortage of skilled labor
brought in workers from Korea, the United States, and the Philippines.
The bazaar (open marketplace where goods are sold in booths or
stands) was the heart of Iran’s economy, but in 1977, governmentcontrolled inspectors prowled the streets looking for price gougers who
sold items at hugely inflated prices. Those found were arrested and exiled.
The government’s corrupt schemes and policies kept the poor desperate.
In that same year, Islam became a powerful political force, and
Iranians embraced the religion as a means of dealing with the tyranny of the government.
Conditions worsen
U.S. president Jimmy Carter (1924–; served 1977–81) was dedicated to
human rights, not only for citizens of his homeland but also for people
everywhere. In order to continue receiving military and financial support
from the United States, Iran’s shah (head of government, like a king),
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980), implemented a reform program
focused on land reform and literacy. Most Iranians felt the shah’s efforts
improved conditions only minimally, and they feared things would
regress once he had won Carter’s approval.
The shah and his henchmen responded to his critics with arrests and
torture. Protests and demonstrations became common occurrences as the
Iranian people refused to be oppressed any longer. Between January
1978 and February 1979, an estimated ten to twelve thousand people
were killed, and another fifty thousand were injured by the shah’s forces.
Because the United States supported the shah’s violent regime, the
Iranian citizens’ anti-American sentiment increased. Conditions reached
the lowest point when the corrupt shah left Iran and was granted refuge
(safety) in New York City in October 1979 to receive some medical
treatment. He had lost his country to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
(c. 1900–1989).
Hostages are taken
On November 4, 1979, a group of almost five hundred radical Iranian
students stormed the U.S. embassy in Teheran and took hostage about
ninety people. Most of them worked in the embassy, and sixty-six of
them were U.S. citizens. The students held fifty-two of them hostage for
444 days. The hostages were poorly fed, placed in small cells, and ordered not to communicate. Those who broke the rules were locked in
solitary confinement for as long as three days. Near the end of their captivity, the hostages were forced to stand before mock firing squads.
Most nations joined the United States in condemning the Iranian
revolutionaries’ actions. Carter underestimated the power of the Islamic
revival, and his inability to get the hostages freed caused irreparable harm
to his presidency. He never wavered in his support of the exiled shah, and
when an attempt to rescue the hostages had to be aborted in April 1980,
the president’s popularity was permanently damaged. Historians generally agree that the Iran hostage crisis was one of the
primary reasons why Republican Party candidate Ronald Reagan
(1911–2004; served 1981–89) won the 1980 presidential election by a
landslide. On January 20, 1981, the day of Reagan’s inauguration, the
hostages were freed.
Before the hostage crisis, Iran had been a country shrouded in mystery. The wide media coverage of the crisis forced the United States and
other countries to try to understand Iran and its people. Unfortunately,
the crisis left a legacy of misunderstanding that would cripple IranianAmerican relations for years.
From the point of view of the Iran revolutionaries, the hostage crisis
enabled them to prove what they had been claiming all along: Once the
embassy was seized, the militants found evidence that the United States
had joined forces with the Soviet Union to back the Iranian government
and oppose the revolution. In taking the hostages, they won the support
of the masses and effectively ended any attempt the United States might have made to reverse the revolution.