Hundreds of Iranian university students, radicalized by the revolution and furious at the U.S. sheltering the exiled Shah, scaled the walls of the American Embassy in Tehran and seized control of the compound. They took 66 American diplomats and staff hostage, beginning a standoff that would dominate the Carter presidency and reshape U.S.-Iran relations for decades.
The seizure came less than a year after the Iranian Revolution had toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose brutal secret police and lavish Western-backed rule had bred deep resentment. When the deposed Shah was admitted to the United States for cancer treatment in October 1979, it confirmed for many Iranians their worst fear: that Washington intended to restore him to power, just as the CIA had helped do in 1953.
On the morning of November 4, a group calling itself the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line breached the embassy walls in downtown Tehran. What began as a planned short occupation, intended as a protest, became a 444-day international crisis after Ayatollah Khomeini threw his support behind the students. Blindfolded American hostages were paraded before cameras and crowds outside chanted 'Death to America,' images that seared themselves into U.S. political memory. A botched rescue attempt in April 1980 ended in a helicopter crash in the desert, killing eight American servicemen and deepening the humiliation. The hostages were finally released on January 20, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, ending a crisis that had crippled Jimmy Carter's presidency and fundamentally poisoned relations between the two nations.