Iran Hostage Crisis

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The Iran hostage crisis, referred to within Iran in Persian as تسخیر لانه جاسوسی امریکا (literally "Conquest of the American Spy Den,"), was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days (November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981), after a group of Iranian students, belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who were supporting the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.[1] President Jimmy Carter called the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy," adding that "the United States will not yield to blackmail."[2] The crisis was described by the western media as an entanglement of "vengeance and mutual incomprehension."[3] In Iran, the hostage taking was widely seen as a blow against the United States and its influence in Iran, its perceived attempts to undermine the Iranian Revolution, and its longstanding support of the recently overthrown Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Following his overthrow in 1979, the Shah was admitted into the U.S. for medical treatment for cancer. The Iranians demanded that the Shah be returned to Iran for trial and execution for crimes he was accused of committing during his reign. Specifically, they accused the Shah of crimes against Iranian citizens with the help of his secret police, the SAVAK. Iranians saw the asylum granted by the U.S. as American complicity in the atrocities the Shah had committed. In the United States, the hostage-taking was seen as an egregious violation of the principles of international law which granted diplomats immunity from arrest and diplomatic compounds' inviolability.[4][5] The hostage crisis reached a climax when, after failed attempts to negotiate a release of the hostages, the United States military attempted a rescue operation using ships such as the USS Nimitz and USS Coral

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