444-day siege that beset Iran-US relations since 1979

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

TEHRAN, Iran (AA) – Habibullah Qaharmani vividly remembers the day, more than four decades ago, when angry students stormed the sprawling US Embassy compound in downtown Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage.

Qaharmani, now 65 and retired from government service, was a young student at Tehran University and actively involved in campus politics.

On the morning of Nov. 4, 1979, he joined thousands of students outside the US Embassy complex to protest against the Jimmy Carter administration’s decision to allow the deposed Iranian monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to take refuge in the US, and to demand his extradition.

As the demonstration gathered momentum, many students climbed over the wall of the embassy building, overtaking the 27-acre compound. So what began as a sit-in eventually turned into a 444-day siege.

“There was chaos and commotion, loud sloganeering in favor of the revolution and against the deposed Shah as well as the US,” Qaharmani recalled while talking to Anadolu Agency. “By welcoming Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), the US government made its intentions clear and that was a red line for Iranians.”

Initially, around 90 people were taken hostage by the protesting students, including 66 Americans. Two weeks later, Iran’s then-leader Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of female and African-American hostages, bringing the total of American hostages down to 53.

One more hostage was freed in July 1980 due to illness. The remaining 52 hostages had to spend the next 14 months in captivity, the period that changed the course of US-Iran relations forever.

In Iran, Nov. 4 is officially marked every year as the “national day of the fight against global arrogance” and sees massive anti-American street rallies in Tehran and other major Iranian cities.

The consequences of that hostage crisis 42 years ago reverberate to this day, as is evident from simmering tensions between the two long-time adversaries over Iran’s nuclear program.

- Anti-US sentiment

While popular sentiment against the US was rooted in the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup against Iran’s democratically-elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh, the hostage crisis of Nov. 1979 turned out to be a proverbial last nail in the coffin of Iran-US ties.

Javad Mansouri, who headed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) at the time of the embassy takeover, told Anadolu Agency that the siege was planned to last “just a few days”, and the idea was to “force Washington to extradite Pahlavi and to release Iran’s frozen assets”.

“But the US insisted on pursuing a wrong approach and refused to accept the students’ demands,” he said, adding that the embassy siege “dismantled a center for espionage” in Iran.

“The documents recovered from the embassy showed how unlawful Washington’s activities in Iran were,” Mansouri hastened to add, referring to the documents that are now on display in the embassy.

Hassan Beheshtipour, a senior fellow at the Institute for Iran-Eurasia Studies, says the students through their “radical action” wanted to raise voices against the “American interventionist policies”, as they feared the “repeat of the 1953 coup”.

“The students knew that an attack on the US Embassy would receive wide media coverage,” he told Anadolu Agency. “They also aimed to obtain some documented evidence proving that the US is intervening in Iran’s internal affairs.”

Beheshtipour said the students initially intended to occupy the embassy “for a maximum of 72 hours”, but then Ayatollah Khomeini saw it as an “opportunity to limit the US ability to perform its plots” in Iran.

The two-story embassy, nestled between two of the busiest streets in downtown Tehran, has now been turned into a museum, called the “US den of espionage museum”. Documents pertaining to confidential matters, spying equipment, telephones, and typewriters are on display in the museum.

The outer walls of the former embassy are painted with colorful anti-US murals that immediately grab the visitors’ attention. The “Great Seal” of the US has also been defaced at the main entrance.

- Siege proved lengthy

Veteran Iranian politician and former parliamentarian Morteza Alviri says he was one of those who supported the embassy takeover at the time, but now he believes the crisis was “dragged out”.

“The students were enraged by the US government’s decision and I believe that should be respected,” he told Anadolu Agency. “But I think the takeover should not have continued beyond a few days as the Islamic Republic was responsible for security at the embassy compound.”

Alviri, who also served as Tehran Mayor between 1999 and 2001, calls the endorsement of the embassy takeover by Iranian government officials a “strategic mistake”, and says prolonging it “dealt serious blows to Iran’s national interests”.

However, he is of the opinion that the US decision to snub the call of students to extradite the former Iran ruler was a provocation that made people in Iran furious.

“Following the 1979 revolution, the Iranian people wanted the former ruler to be put to trial over the many atrocities he committed during his rule,” Alviri said. “The decision by the Carter administration to admit Mohammad Reza Shah infuriated many people, including students.”

Farhang Jahanpour, an Iranian-British political commentator, who was working at the Isfahan University when the hostage crisis took place in 1979, echoing Alviri’s words, calls it the “single most important act that delivered a major blow to Iran-US relations”.

The two countries have in the past four decades turned into bitter adversaries, and the trigger was the events that unfolded on the morning of Nov. 4, 1979.

Incidents like the one on Wednesday in the Sea of Oman, where an American military vessel allegedly confiscated an Iranian oil tanker before the Iranian naval forces seized it back underline the acrimony that has come to define their relationship.