On November 4, 1979, students calling themselves the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line cut through the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran with metal cutters hidden under their chadors, expecting a short sit-in. Their anger traced back to Operation Ajax, the 1953 CIA and British coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and to decades of rule by the Shah and his SAVAK secret police. Jimmy Carter’s decision to admit the ailing Shah for cancer treatment in New York, urged by Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller over State Department objections, was read in Iran as the start of another coup. Ayatollah Khomeini endorsed the takeover, and Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan’s moderate government resigned.
Women and African American hostages were released early, and one more after he fell ill with multiple sclerosis, leaving 52. Six diplomats escaped to Canadian homes and were flown out posing as a film crew for a CIA front called Studio Six. Carter halted Iranian oil imports and froze $8 billion in assets, and in April 1980 Operation Eagle Claw ended in a desert collision that killed eight U.S. service members and one Iranian civilian, after which Cyrus Vance resigned. The Shah’s death in July and Iraq’s invasion in September shifted Iran’s priorities. With Algeria carrying messages and holding the funds in escrow, the hostages left Iranian airspace minutes after Ronald Reagan took the oath.
- The students at first debated targeting the Soviet embassy instead.
- The embassy’s incinerator was broken, so staff fed classified papers into ordinary shredders.
- Hired carpet weavers pieced the shredded strips back together, and the students published them as Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den.
- Studio Six had a Los Angeles office, working phone lines and ads in Variety.
- The United States and Iran still have no formal relations; Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Tehran and Pakistan represents Iran’s in the U.S.
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