Following the November 4 storming of the US Embassy by Iranian students demanding the extradition of the exiled Shah, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared his support for the action, transforming a student protest into a state-sanctioned crisis. The endorsement doomed diplomatic efforts to quickly resolve the standoff and set in motion the 444-day hostage crisis that crippled Jimmy Carter's presidency and reshaped US-Iran relations for decades.
The seizure of the US Embassy began on November 4, 1979, when several hundred Iranian students, furious over America's admission of the deposed Shah for medical treatment, scaled the embassy walls and took 66 American diplomats and staff hostage. What might have been a short-lived protest, similar to a brief embassy occupation earlier that year, became something far more consequential once Ayatollah Khomeini threw his revolutionary authority behind the students.
Khomeini's public blessing, delivered in the days immediately following the takeover, signaled that the new Islamic Republic itself now owned the crisis, foreclosing any quiet diplomatic release. He framed the embassy as a 'den of spies' and the hostages as leverage against American interference in Iranian affairs, tapping into decades of resentment over US support for the Shah's authoritarian rule, including the CIA-backed 1953 coup.
The crisis dragged on for 444 days, featuring a botched American rescue attempt, Operation Eagle Claw, that ended in a fatal helicopter collision in the Iranian desert. The hostages were finally released in January 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, in a final humiliation for the outgoing Carter administration, whose handling of the crisis had dominated and ultimately doomed his re-election campaign.
Key people: Ruhollah Khomeini, Jimmy Carter