Source: American Experience: "Jimmy Carter"
This media asset was adapted from American Experience: "Jimmy Carter".
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In this video segment adapted from American Experience, watch newsreel footage, archival photos, and interviews to explore the events related to the seizure of 53 American hostages by Iranian radicals in 1979, at the dawn of Iran's Islamic Revolution. Fueled by widespread anger at the autocratic policies of the Shah of Iran, religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini led a successful revolt that established an Islamic republic. President Carter's decision to admit the deposed shah, a former American ally, into the United States for medical treatment preceded the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and 53 Americans who worked there in October 1979. Negotiations failed to secure the hostages' release, which did not occur until the swearing in of Carter's successor, President Ronald Reagan.
Download OnlyIran was critical to U.S. strategic policy during World War II, when it provided a staging ground for Allied troops in the Persian Gulf and a channel for aid to the Soviet Union. Its geographical position on Russia's border and its vast petroleum resources only enhanced Iran's value as a U.S. ally once the Cold War began. Iran's prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq threatened the status quo, however, by pushing democratic reforms that led to the nationalization of British oil interests in 1951 and the fleeing of the Iranian monarch, Mohammad-Rezã Shãh Pahlavi, in 1953. The United States responded by participating behind the scenes in an August 1953 coup that removed Mossadeq, restored the shah to his throne, and allowed Western interests to retain their control of Iranian oil.
For the next quarter century, the shah sustained his authority through repression and torture and with extensive American aid. His opulent, "Western" lifestyle offended religious fundamentalists. Despite the shah's growing detachment from affairs of state and weakened position, President Carter toasted him as an "island of stability" during a state visit at the end of 1977. Within weeks of Carter visit, strikes and civil unrest spread throughout Iran, the shah was driven into exile, and the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in what would shortly become an Islamic republic.
Khomeini represented the feelings of many Iranians by referring to the United States as the Great Satan and the cause of all of the country's woes. On October 22, 1979, the United States, recognizing the possible risks, allowed the shah to enter the country to receive cancer treatment at the Mayo Clinic. Two weeks later, using this as a justification, Iranians seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 53 American hostages. For the remaining 14 months of his administration, President Carter worked to obtain the release of the hostages, rejecting military options at first for fear of drawing the Soviet Union into the conflict. After the American public grew more obsessed with the situation and negotiations proved unproductive, Carter ordered a military rescue, known as Operation Eagle Claw, which was aborted after mechanical failures.
Inevitably, the hostage crisis became a central issue in the 1980 presidential campaign, as supporters of Republican challenger Ronald Reagan claimed that Carter was planning an "October surprise" in which the hostages would be released just prior to the election, while Democrats made the counterclaim that it was Reagan's emissaries who secretly persuaded the Iranians to withhold their release until after a new administration was in place. In the end, the hostages were finally released after 444 days in captivity on January 20, 1981, a mere 20 minutes after Reagan's inauguration.
JIMMY CARTER: Iran, because of the great leadership of the shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.
NARRATOR: Carter was aware of the brutality of Iran's secret police, but the shah, installed to the throne in a U.S.-backed coup in 1953, had long been a trusted ally.
GADDIS SMITH: Strategic considerations trumped human rights in Iran, because the perception of the United States was, first, that Iran was a secure source of oil-- and it certainly was an important source of oil; that it had one of the most powerful military establishments in the world, which was nonsense but the shah was saying he was going to have the second most powerful navy. Iran, of course, bordered on the Soviet Union.
NARRATOR: One week after Carter's visit, anti-shah demonstrations broke out. When Iranian secret police fired on the demonstrators and killed several students, religious leaders called the shah's government anti-Islamic. The anti-shah movement, which had begun in early 1978, had grown into a full-fledged Islamic revolution. The shah was driven into exile, and the Ayatollah Khomeini became the leader of a new and mysterious Islamic republic.
SMITH: If Carter had been more critical of the shah, conceivably it would have been a little more difficult for the Ayatollah Khomeini to identify the United States as the "Great Satan" and to say, "Everything that is wrong in Iran is basically the fault of the United States." Maybe the fact that the United States had been a significant player in Iran since 1945 was such that it was too late for Carter, or anybody, to change the deeply hostile nature of the Iranian revolution.
NARRATOR: The deposed shah of Iran, ill with cancer, asked permission to come to the United States for medical treatment.
WALTER F. MONDALE: He went around the room and a lot of the people said, "Let him in."
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: We treated him as an ally in good times, and I felt it was our responsibility to treat him as a former ally, but a friend in bad times. I thought American credibility was at stake.
MONDALE: And he said, "And if, then, this revolution moves in a way to take our employees in our embassy hostage, then what would be your advice?" And the room just fell dead.
NARRATOR: The shah arrived in the United States on October 22. Two weeks later, Iranian students seized the American embassy. 53 Americans were to be held hostage until the United States returned the shah to Iran.
PAT CADDELL: It was a defining event. This is the entire United States government captured and held illegally under international law and being taunted every day.
NARRATOR: "I would lie awakeat night trying to think of steps I could take to gain the hostages' freedom without sacrificing the honor and security of our nation," the president wrote.
JODY POWELL: To react in a waythat was strong and powerful would have set us off down a road that no man could say where it might lead. People have a hard time remembering that this was before the Cold War was over, and the possibility of a superpower confrontation in and about Iran had always been there. And now, under these circumstances, it was much higher.
TV ANNOUNCER: "The Iran Crisis."
WALTER CRONKITE: Good evening. The 100th day of captivity for 50 Americans...
NARRATOR: As spring 1980 approached, the hostages had grown into a national obsession, their memory kept alive by millions of yellow ribbons.
ELIZABETH DREW: Fairly or not, it came to symbolize the question of whether Carter was a leader, whether he was competent, whether he was strong.
NARRATOR: On the last day of his presidency, Jimmy Carter stayed up through the night. A deal with Iran had been reached. The release of the hostages was imminent.
MONDALE: We were in the Oval Office around maybe 2:00 in the morning, and nothing happening. We got to the time where it was 9:00 in the morning. We had to be at the inaugural. The new president was coming in at 11:00. And finally we all started running off.
MAN: And the home of the...
MONDALE: And of course the story was that Khomeini released them the minute after Reagan was president.
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