444 Days: Looking Back At The U.S.-Iran Hostage Crisis
Forty years ago, on November 4, 1979, student followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took dozens of American hostages. The attack sparked a diplomatic crisis that reverberates through the region to this day.
Amid Iran's Islamic Revolution, students supported by large, angry crowds took control of the U.S. compound. They said they were outraged that the country's former leader, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had been admitted to the United States for cancer treatment.
It would be 444 days before 52 American hostages were freed. The diplomatic standoff inflicted grave damage to the presidency of Jimmy Carter, and U.S.-Iranian relations have never recovered.
1. Several hundred young Iranians, supported by a crowd of more than 3,000, climb the walls of the U.S. Embassy at 10:30 a.m. on November 4, 1979. They blindfolded and handcuffed dozens of U.S. citizens they found inside. Protesters had seized the Tehran compound months before, capturing a U.S. Marine on February 14, but order was restored after several hours.
14 The American hostages are shown on Christmas Eve 1979. Hundreds of cards sent from well-wishers in the United States were delivered to Iranian guards, who promised to hand them over to the hostages after inspection, but never did.
Read more at: https://www.rferl.org/a/united-states-iran-hostage-crisis-40-years-ago-anniversary/30245844.html
Quite a few articles are coming out, tomorrow, will mark the 40th anniversary of the commencement of the Iran Hostage Crisis.
