The Iranian Revolution had overthrown Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 11 February 1979 and installed an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The deposed Shah was admitted to the United States on 22 October 1979 for cancer treatment. Iranian opinion read the admission as a US prelude to restoring the Shah — a parallel to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that had returned him to power.
On the morning of 4 November 1979 several hundred Iranian student militants of the “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line” broke through the gates of the US Embassy compound on Takht-e Jamshid Avenue in Tehran. The Marine Security Guard fired tear gas but had instructions not to use lethal force. The embassy was overrun within approximately three hours. Sixty-six Americans were taken hostage.
The hostages
Thirteen hostages — women and Black Americans — were released on 19-20 November 1979. One was released on medical grounds on 11 July 1980. The remaining 52 hostages were held the full duration. Six US diplomats not present at the main embassy compound on 4 November were sheltered by the Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor and exfiltrated on 27 January 1980 on Canadian passports using a CIA cover story of a fake Hollywood film scouting trip — later dramatised in the 2012 film Argo.
The hostages were held in various sites across Tehran. They were subjected to mock executions, prolonged solitary confinement, beatings, and psychological pressure. They were not killed.
Desert One
The Carter administration approved a military rescue plan — Operation Eagle Claw — for 24-25 April 1980. The plan called for eight helicopters from the USS Nimitz to fly to a desert rendezvous code-named Desert One approximately 300 km southeast of Tehran, refuel, then strike Tehran the following night.
Two helicopters failed in a sandstorm before reaching Desert One. A third was forced to abort. With only five operational helicopters the mission commander aborted. During the withdrawal a helicopter collided with a C-130 refueller; the resulting fire killed eight US servicemen and destroyed both aircraft. The wreckage and US bodies were left at Desert One. Iranian state television broadcast the wreckage and corpses on 25 April 1980.
The Shah died of cancer in Cairo on 27 July 1980.
The release
Algerian diplomats mediated the final settlement across November 1980 - January 1981. The Algiers Accords of 19 January 1981 unfroze approximately $8 billion in Iranian assets in exchange for the hostages’ release.
The 52 hostages were flown out of Tehran on 20 January 1981 — minutes after Ronald Reagan’s noon inauguration. The timing was widely understood as a final Iranian humiliation of the outgoing Carter administration.
The hostage crisis had lasted 444 days. The post-Cold War declassification of US intelligence files has shown that no Iranian negotiation channel before October 1980 had been authorized to release the hostages on terms acceptable to Carter.