Remembering the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege | Confusions and Connections You are here: Home » Remembering the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege Remembering the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege Today, May 5, is the 34th anniversary of one of the most memorable stories of the late 20th century. That being the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London. I remember the siege quite well. I had just turned 9 a few days earlier but the famous image of the front windows being blown out and dark clad, gas mask wearing people running into the building just stuck in my mind. All of this broadcast, almost, live on TV. The British government tried everything to bring the siege to a peaceful conclusion but, as we know, this didn’t happen. The outcome was broadcast in, at the time, the longest newsflash in television history. This newsflash went on for about 45 minutes. We were kept informed on what was happening at the embassy by a young female reporter who came into her own at the other end of the decade at Tienanmen Square. That being Kate Adie who was reporting the event from hiding behind a car door.

In the days leading up to the violent ending of the siege the police tried everything in their psychological handbook to disrupt the terrorists. From organising the cutting of power to the building, changing the flightpath to London Heathrow. One of the best was to get, I think it was British Gas, to do some “maintenance work” nearby so throwing not only lower flying aircraft but the annoyance of pneumatic drills going off all day. Over the years more and more has come out about what happened in government. A lot has been held back because of the Official Secret Act and the “30 year rule”. I’m sure that more will be released over the years when the next block of year rules kick in. I have other vivid memory of the events in early May 1980 This is from the aftermath as I was in London a few months later on a trip to Baden Powell house with the rest of my cub pack. One of the days there we drove past the embassy and saw the fire damage to the front window. The same one that made such dramatic footage a short time before. Over the years we have learnt more and more about what happened inside in the short time that it took the SAS to rescue the hostages and kill, most of, the terrorists.

There are still controversial aspects of the operation that are still here today. What happened in the Wireless room is the main area of contention even today. There are also aspects of the siege that showed the sneaky side of the British character. Two BBC employees were at the embassy. Not that unusual as they were there to have their visa applications approved so they can go and cover the revolution that had just happened in the country. They were Sim Harris and Chris Cramer. Chris was taken seriously ill on the 2nd day. It does seem that he did play up how ill he actually was so to be released. This release was one of the best pieces of news that the SAS and police had in the early days of the siege. He could easily, in English, answer all of the questions that were needed that helped plan the operation that ended the siege on May 5. They had already found and talked to the building’s caretaker who told them, ironically, that on SAS advice the embassy should upgrade their ground floor windows and doors to bulletproof glass and a re-enforced steel main door. The terrorists didn’t do themselves many favours as well.

It all started when they searched the hostages and didn’t discover that the Policeman on duty at the embassy door was armed throughout the siege. They did do some good things, such as releasing the women over the days as well as a couple of the male hostages. The male hostages, such as Chris Cramer, were released on medical grounds apart form one who was released because he snored so loudly he was annoying the rest of the people in the building. When the raid started it was agreed with all the news agencies at the scene who were broadcasting live to do so on a 10 minute delay so not to tip off the terrorists if they were listening to the radio or watching television. The operation started when we saw “shapes” moving across the roof of the buildings surrounding the embassy. Then it happened quite quickly. Men crossing the balcony from the adjoined building carrying something. Then a huge explosion and someone, Sim Harris we discovered a little later, leaping out of the flames and being herded to the building on the other side. By this time we discovered that the policeman, Trevor Lock, was struggling with one of the terrorists and managed to draw his weapon that he had managed to keep secret.

He did say later that as this happened a figure with a weapon burst into the room and “ordered him off the terrorist by name”. After that order the terrorist got a burst of gunfire aimed at him… One of the terrorists survived by disguising himself as a hostage and managed to get out of the building. There has been comments made that he was going to be taken back into the building and be “taken care off”. This didn’t happen as they were reminded of the world’s press were there and it wouldn’t have been the best end of the successful mission. It was a different time. There was a new television channel that had just started on American cable. CNN. Here in the UK we didn’t have that. We didn’t even have morning TV. TVAM and BBC Breakfast were still a couple of years away. There were 3 TV channels. Not even Channel 4 had started by then. The BBC did this piece as a wrap-up later on in the day. ` 35 Years Later, Looking Back at the Iran Hostage Crisis - History in the Headlines 35 Years Later, Looking Back at the Iran Hostage Crisis November 4, 2014 By Sarah Pruitt The first group of released U.S.

Embassy staffers address the media on November 18, 1979 Share this: 35 Years Later, Looking Back at the Iran Hostage Crisis Author 35 Years Later, Looking Back at the Iran Hostage Crisis URL Google After President Jimmy Carter agreed to allow Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the exiled former leader of Iran, into the United States to undergo cancer treatment, many Iranians saw it as the first move in a U.S.-backed attempt to reinstate the Shah’s hated pro-Western regime. Less than a month later, on November 4, 1979, a group of radical Iranian students smashed the gates and scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 Americans hostage. Ever since oil was discovered in Iran in the first decade of the 20th century, the country had attracted great interest from the West. British corporations controlled the majority of Iran’s petroleum by the early 1950s, when newly elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh announced plans to nationalize the country’s oil industry.

Worried that Mossadegh was moving Iran closer to the Soviet Union, the Cold War-era Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British intelligence conspired to overthrow Mossadegh and consolidate power under a leader who was more receptive to Western interests. That leader, a member of Iran’s royal family named Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, was installed in power in 1953. Under the Shah’s pro-Western, secular anti-communist government, some 80 percent of the nation’s oil reserves returned to U.S. and British control. With a steady supply of American-made weapons, the Shah and SAVAK, his secret police, brutally repressed opposition to his rule, including an uprising in 1963 led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an elderly Islamic cleric. Finally, in 1979, a popular revolution in Iran swept the Shah from power, replacing him with an Islamist government engineered by Khomeini, who returned triumphantly after 14 years of exile to take his place as Iran’s political and religious leader. U.S.

President Jimmy Carter, against the advice of some of his advisers, declined to act in support of the Shah, but also failed to reach out to the opposition–a decision that would cost him dearly. That October, after it was announced that the Shah, now in exile in Mexico, was suffering from an aggressive form of cancer, Carter reluctantly decided to allow him entrance to the United States for treatment on humanitarian grounds. Iranian students climb the walls of the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. (Credit: AFP/Getty Images) The decision sparked a firestorm of anti-American sentiment in Iran, culminating in the students’ siege on the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4. The Iran hostage crisis would bring the United States to a state of near war with Iran and torpedo Carter’s presidency. After a short time, the students released 13 of the 66 hostages, who were mostly diplomats and employees at the embassy. Those released were mostly women, African Americans and non-U.S.

citizens, whom (according to Khomeini) were already subject to the “oppression of American society.” Though another hostage was later released due to health problems, 52 men and women remained in captivity by mid-summer of 1980. President Carter made freeing the hostages in Iran the top priority of his administration, but neither diplomatic overtures nor economic sanctions swayed the Ayatollah and his supporters. In April 1980, a military operation involving an elite rescue team failed after a helicopter crashed into a transport plane, killing eight servicemen. Amid constant media coverage, Carter’s failure to resolve the hostage crisis doomed his 1980 reelection campaign, as Republican challenger Ronald Reagan benefited greatly from Carter’s increasing weakness. (Rumors even circled that Reagan campaign staffers negotiated with the Iranians to ensure that the hostages were not released before election, but Reagan would vigorously deny these allegations.) In November 1980, Reagan won a landslide victory. Meanwhile, the embassy hostages lived in deep uncertainty and fear, subjected to long periods of confinement, beatings, threats of bodily harm and execution. Among other privations, their captives deprived them of hot and cold running water until days before their release.

After months of negotiations, the United States and Iran finally came to an agreement to free the hostages in December 1980, but the Iranians showed their enduring hatred of Carter by waiting to release them until minutes after Reagan delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 1981. The Iran hostage crisis brought the United States directly into conflict with militant, political Islam for the first time. It also began the hostility that continues to characterize the U.S. relationship with Iran to this day. In Tehran, the former embassy building, which served as a prison for the hostages over those agonizing 444 days, is now an Islamic cultural center and museum. Known in Iran as “the den of spies,” it has become a symbol of the Iranian revolution. Tags history of Iran | Britannica.com History of Iran THIS IS A DIRECTORY PAGE. Britannica does not currently have an article on this topic. Blindfolded American hostage with his Iranian captors outside the U.S. embassy in Tehrān, November 9, 1979. AP Learn about this topic in these articles: in ancient Iran historic region of southwestern Asia that is only roughly coterminous with modern Iran.

The term Persia was used for centuries, chiefly in the West, to designate those regions where Persian language and culture predominated, but it more correctly refers to a region of southern Iran formerly known... in Baloch Some 70 percent of the total Baloch population live in Pakistan. About 20 percent inhabit the coterminous region of southeastern Iran. This geographic region is the least-developed in Iran, partially owing to its harsh physical conditions. Precipitation, which is scarce and falls mostly in violent rainstorms, causes floods and heavy erosion, while heat is oppressive for eight months of the... in China: Yuan China and the West ...cultural entity was realized only dimly and gradually in the European West, Chinese influences spread under the Yuan dynasty to other parts of Asia. Chinese medical treatises were translated into Persian, and Persian miniature painting in the 13th and 14th centuries shows many influences of Chinese art. Chinese-type administration and chancellery practices were adopted by various Mongol... in India: Bahmanī consolidation of the Deccan ...affiliation of the nobilities developed, largely because of differences in recruiting patterns.

Soon after the foundation of the Bahmanī state, large numbers of Arabs, Turks, and particularly Persians began to immigrate to the Deccan, many of them at the invitation of Sultan Muḥammad I, and there they had a strong influence on the development of Muslim culture during subsequent... in history of Central Asia: Mongol rule The great khan Möngke (1251–59), who had sent his brother Kublai to conquer China, entrusted another of his brothers, Hülegü, with the task of consolidating the Mongol hold on Iran. In 1258 Hülegü occupied Baghdad and put an end to the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. He laid the foundations of a Mongol state in Iran, known as the Il-Khanate (because the il-khan was... in Süleyman the Magnificent: The campaigns against Persia Süleyman waged three major campaigns against Persia. The first (1534–35) gave the Ottomans control over the region of Erzurum in eastern Asia Minor and also witnessed the Ottoman conquest of Iraq, a success that rounded off the achievements of Selim I.

The second campaign (1548–49) brought much of the area around Lake Van under Ottoman rule, but the third (1554–55) served... in Afghan War ...and depopulating the rural areas. These tactics sparked a massive flight from the countryside; by 1982 some 2.8 million Afghans had sought asylum in Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had fled to Iran. The mujahideen were eventually able to neutralize Soviet air power through the use of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles supplied by the Soviet Union’s Cold War adversary, the United States. in Al-Shāriqah Prior to independence Iran asserted its claim to the Al-Shāriqah island of Abū Mūsā, in the open gulf northwest of Al-Shāriqah town, and landed troops there. A subsequent agreement between Iran and Al-Shāriqah promised that both flags would fly over the island, settled the question of possible future oil discoveries in the area (where Al-Shāriqah had... in history of Arabia: Omani expansion The Persians captured Muscat in 1743.

The Yaʿrubids dissolved into dynastic dispute, and a leader named Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd set to liberating Oman from the Persians. He became imam in 1749, founding the Āl Bū Saʿīd dynasty. This period in Oman is marked by the crystallization of the political alignment of the tribes of the Banū Ghāfir... in history of Arabia: The Iran-Iraq War ...to the rich oil states of the gulf arose with the revolution in Iran in 1978–79 and with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. Islamic fundamentalism in the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Iran struck an answering chord with Shīʿites and Iranian workers in the Arabian states, which gave financial support to Iraq. U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his successor in 1981, Ronald... in axis of evil expression used to describe the bellicose tendencies of Iran, North Korea, and Iraq in the early 21st century. The phrase was coined by Canadian-born U.S. presidential speechwriter David Frum and presidential aide Michael Gerson for use by U.S. President George W.

Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address, when he asserted that states like these, and their terrorist allies,... in Azerbaijan: History ...Ottoman Turks who came to dominate Anatolia, the Caucasian Muslims of Azerbaijan in the early 16th century became Shīʿite, rather than Sunni, Muslims, and they continued to develop under Persian social and cultural influence. Persian-ruled khanates in Shirvan (Şamaxı), Baku, Ganja (Gäncä), Karabakh, and Yerevan dominated this frontier of Ṣafavid Iran. in Bahrain: Domestic and foreign relations since independence ...defense and has helped both countries economically and politically. Bahrain has maintained relatively good relations with the United States and has continued to house the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Iran’s ties to the country’s Shīʿite community, its territorial claims to the island, and its displeasure with the American presence in Bahrain have helped to strain relations between it... in 20th-century international relations: The Suez Crisis The conservative Cabinet in London, the French, and the Israelis resolved to thwart Nasser.

They could cite as precedent a CIA-backed coup d’état in Iran (August 1953) that overthrew the ascetic nationalist Mohammad Mosaddeq, who had expropriated foreign oil interests and also looked for support to the U.S.S.R. In any case, British, French, and Israeli planners met to work out a joint... in Georgia: Turkish and Persian domination ...Ottoman Empire in 1453 isolated Georgia from western Christendom. In 1510 the Ottomans invaded Imereti and sacked the capital, Kʿutʿaisi. Soon afterward, Shah Ismāʿīl I of Iran (Persia) invaded Kartli. Ivan IV (the Terrible) and other Muscovite tsars showed interest in the little Christian kingdoms of Georgia, but the Russians were powerless to stop the Muslim... in intelligence (international relations): Iran Prior to the Islamic revolution of 1978–79 in Iran, SAVAK (Organization of National Security and Information), the Iranian secret police and intelligence service, protected the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing many dissidents.

After the shah’s government fell, SAVAK and other intelligence services were eliminated and new services were created, though many low- and... in Iran-Contra Affair In early 1985 the head of the NSC, Robert C. McFarlane, undertook the sale of antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in the mistaken belief that such a sale would secure the release of a number of American citizens who were being held captive in Lebanon by Shīʿite terrorist groups loyal to Iran. This and several subsequent weapon sales to Iran in 1986 directly contradicted the... in Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), prolonged military conflict between Iran and Iraq during the 1980s. Open warfare began on Sept. 22, 1980, when Iraqi armed forces invaded western Iran along the countries’ joint border, though Iraq claimed that the war had begun earlier that month, on September 4, when Iran... in 20th-century international relations: The Soviets in Afghanistan ...with U.S. and Chinese weapons, held out in the mountains against more than 100,000 Soviet troops and terror bombing of their villages.

More than 2,000,000 Afghans became refugees in Pakistan and Iran. Western observers soon began to speak of Afghanistan as the Soviets’ Vietnam. in 20th-century international relations: The Middle East The war between Iraq and Iran, which began in 1980, also reached a conclusion. The war had been conducted with the utmost ferocity on both sides. The Iraqi leader, Hussein, employed every weapon in his arsenal, including Soviet Scud missiles and poison gas purchased from West Germany, and the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Khomeini ordered its Revolutionary Guards to make human-wave assaults... in 20th-century international relations: The first post-Cold War crisis: war in the Persian Gulf For nearly two years after the UN-brokered cease-fire in the Persian Gulf, the governments of Iraq and Iran failed to initiate conversations toward a permanent peace treaty. Suddenly, in July 1990, the foreign ministers of the two states met in Geneva full of optimism about the prospects for peace. Why Saddam Hussein now seemed willing to liquidate his decade-long conflict with Iran and even...

in nuclear weapon: Iran In the late 1970s the United States obtained intelligence indicating that Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi had established a clandestine nuclear weapons program, though Iran had signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) that followed interrupted this program, but by the late 1980s new efforts were under way, especially... in Stuxnet ...in Finland and Iran and were programmed to run motors at very specific high speeds. This combination indicated to analysts that the likely target of Stuxnet was nuclear installations in Iran—either a uranium-enrichment plant at Naṭanz or a nuclear reactor at Būshehr or both—a conclusion supported by data showing that, of the approximately 100,000 computers... in Ottoman Empire: Bayezid II ...(called Kizilbash [“Redheads”] because of their use of red headgear to symbolize their allegiance); the Ṣafavids used a combined religious and military appeal to conquer most of Iran.

Under the shah Ismāʿīl I (ruled 1501–24), the Ṣafavids sent missionaries throughout Anatolia, spreading a message of religious heresy and political revolt not only... in Ottoman Empire: Reform efforts ...end by Shah ʿAbbās I, who not only restored Iranian power but also conquered Iraq (1624) and threatened to take the entire Ottoman Empire. Though Murad IV was able to retake Iraq (1638), Iran remained a major threat. Finally, a long war with Venice (1645–69), occasioned by Ottoman efforts to capture Crete, exposed Istanbul to a major Venetian naval attack. Although the... in Syria: Uprising and civil war ...by government forces on the northern Syrian city of Jisr al-Shugūr. The worsening humanitarian situation brought calls for international military intervention, but Syria’s allies Russia and Iran continued to object, calling for the Syrian government to be given more time to deal with internal unrest. In October, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the... in Syrian Civil War: Civil war ...proxy war.

Efforts by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to fund and arm rebels became increasingly public in late 2012 and early 2013, while the Syrian government continued to receive weapons from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. By late 2012 Hezbollah had also begun sending its own fighters into Syria to battle the rebels. in Jimmy Carter: Presidency ...substantial foreign policy successes were overshadowed by a serious crisis in foreign affairs and by a groundswell of popular discontent over his economic policies. On November 4, 1979, a mob of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and took the diplomatic staff there hostage. Their actions, in response to the arrival of the deposed shah (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi) in... in Algeria: Foreign relations ...after 1975 with the Western Sahara issue. Yet, while Algeria continued to support the Palestine Liberation Organization, it also took a decisive role in mediating the release of U.S. hostages in Iran in 1981. Throughout the Cold War, Algeria sought to play the leading role in establishing a Third World alternative that was not aligned to the Eastern or Western bloc.

The country also tried to... in United States: Foreign affairs Carter’s greatest defeat was administered by Iran. In that country, following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had been supported by the United States, the Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed on February 1, 1979, under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In November militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and held its occupants hostage. An attempt to... in colonialism, Western: Middle East At the outset of World War II Iran was pro-German, and in August 1941 the Soviet Union and Britain jointly occupied the country, which then became the main supply line connecting the Soviet Union with the Western Allies. In 1942, in a three-power treaty, both Britain and the Soviet Union promised to leave Iran six months after the end of the war. Notwithstanding such commitments, the Soviet... in World War II: Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941 ...of July 12, 1941, pledged the signatory powers to assist one another and to abstain from making any separate peace with Germany.

On August 25, 1941, British and Soviet forces jointly invaded Iran, to forestall the establishment of a German base there and to divide the country into spheres of occupation for the duration of the war; and late in September—at a conference in... Inside Iran's Fury | People & Places | Smithsonian Inside Iran's Fury Scholars trace the nation's antagonism to its history of domination by foreign powers Iran's anger over decades of foreign meddling in its internal affairs reached its apex in the 1979 revolution. (Abbas/ Magnum Photos) By Stephen Kinzer Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe October 2008 No American who was alive and alert in the early 1980s will ever forget the Iran hostage crisis. Militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, captured American diplomats and staff and held 52 of them captive for 444 days. In the United States, the television news program "Nightline" emerged to give nightly updates on the crisis, with anchorman Ted Koppel beginning each report by announcing that it was now "Day 53" or "Day 318" of the crisis.

For Americans, still recovering from defeat in Vietnam, the hostage crisis was a searing ordeal. It stunned the nation and undermined Jimmy Carter's presidency. Many Americans see it as the pivotal episode in the history of U.S.-Iranian relations. From This Story Isfahan: Iran's Hidden Jewel Iranians, however, have a very different view. Bruce Laingen, a career diplomat who was chief of the U.S. embassy staff, was the highest-ranking hostage. One day, after Laingen had spent more than a year as a hostage, one of his captors visited him in his solitary cell. Laingen exploded in rage, shouting at his jailer that this hostage-taking was immoral, illegal and "totally wrong." The jailer waited for him to finish, then replied without sympathy. "You have nothing to complain about," he told Laingen. "The United States took our whole country hostage in 1953." Few Americans remembered that Iran had descended into dictatorship after the United States overthrew the most democratic government it had ever known. "Mr.

President, do you think it was proper for the United States to restore the shah to the throne in 1953 against the popular will within Iran?" a reporter asked President Carter at a news conference during the hostage crisis. "That's ancient history," Carter replied. Not for Iranians. "In the popular mind, the hostage crisis was seen as justified by what had happened in 1953," says Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts. "People saw it as an act of national assertiveness, of Iran standing up and taking charge of its own destiny. The humiliation of 1953 was exorcised by the taking of American hostages in 1979." This chasm of perception reflects the enormous gap in the way Americans and Iranians viewed—and continue to view—one another. It will be hard for them to reconcile their differences unless they begin seeing the world through each other's eyes. Iran's assertiveness on the global stage—especially its defiant pursuit of what it sees as its sovereign right to a nuclear program—is in part the product of traumatic events that have shaped its national consciousness over the course of generations.

In fact, all of 20th-century Iranian history can be seen as leading to this confrontation. That history has been dominated by a single burning passion: to destroy the power that foreigners have long held over Iran. Many countries in the Middle East are modern inventions, carved out of the Ottoman Empire by victorious European powers following the end of World War I. That is not the case with Iran, one of the world's oldest and proudest nations. Half a millennium before the birth of Christ, the great conquerors Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes built the Persian Empire into a far-reaching power. When Europe was descending into the Dark Age, Persian poets were creating works of timeless beauty, and Persian scientists were studying mathematics, medicine and astronomy. Over the centuries, the nation that would become Iran thrived as it assimilated influences from Egypt, Greece and India. Persian armies were not always victorious. They failed to turn back invading Arabs who conquered Persia in the seventh century, decisively reshaping it by introducing Islam. But the Persians turned even this defeat into a kind of victory by adopting their own form of Islam, Shiism, which allowed them to maintain the distinct identity they have always cherished.

Shiite Muslims broke ranks with the majority Sunnis as a result of a succession dispute following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in A.D. 632. While Sunnis believe that Muhammad's friend and adviser, Abu Bakr, was the legitimate successor, Shiites believe that 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet's first cousin and son-in-law, was the rightful heir, and that the Prophet's legitimate lineage ended with the "occultation" of Muhammad al-Mahdi around A.D. 874. This Twelfth Imam is believed to have been hidden by God and is destined to return before the Last Judgment. Shiite religious scholars argued that they should take on some of the Imam's responsibilities in the meantime. (Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini further expanded this concept to justify the clerical rule he imposed on Iran after 1979.) Shiite rulers brought Persia to another peak of power in the 16th and 17th centuries, creating a magnificent capital at Isfahan, where spectacular buildings like the Imam Mosque still testify to the empire's grandeur. From this rich heritage, Iranians have developed a deep-rooted sense of national identity.

The pride they take in their achievements, however, is mixed with resentment. Beginning in the 18th century, Persia descended from glorious heights to appalling depths. Weak and corrupt leaders allowed foreign powers to subjugate the nation. Afghan tribesmen overran and looted Isfahan in 1722. During the early 19th century, Russia seized large Persian territories in the Caspian provinces of Georgia, Armenia, Dagestan and Azerbaijan. In 1872, a British company bought a "concession" from the decadent Qajar dynasty that gave it the exclusive right to run Persia's industries, irrigate its farmland, exploit its mineral resources, develop its railway and streetcar lines, establish its national bank and print its currency. The British statesman Lord Curzon would call this "the most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has ever been dreamed of, much less accomplished, in history." Public outrage in Iran led to the withdrawal of the British concession in 1873, but the incident reflected Iran's new status as a vassal state and a pawn in great-power rivalries.

For nearly 150 years, Russia and Britain dominated Iran's economy and manipulated its leaders. This history still stings. "Nationalism, the desire for independence, is a fundamental theme," says Shaul Bakhash, who teaches Iranian history at George Mason University in Virginia. "The memory of foreign intervention in Iran runs very deep. It is playing itself out again in today's stand-off with the United States over the nuclear program. Iranians think, ‘Once again the West wants to deny us technology and modernism and independence.' It's a very powerful history. Iran is extraordinarily sensitive to any indication of foreign influence or foreign direction." A series of uprisings shaped modern Iranian nationalism. The first erupted in 1891, after the British Imperial Tobacco Company took control of Iran's tobacco industry, which reached deep into the national life of a country where many people survived by growing tobacco and many more smoked it. The morally and financially bankrupt Qajar leader, Nasir al-Din Shah, sold the industry to British Imperial for the laughably small sum of £15,000.

Under the terms of the deal, Iranian tobacco farmers had to sell their crops at prices set by British Imperial, and every smoker had to buy tobacco from a shop that was part of its retail network. This proved one outrage too many. A national boycott of tobacco, supported by everyone from intellectuals and clerics to Nasir al-Din's own harem women, swept the country. Troops fired upon protesters at a huge demonstration in Tehran. After a series of even larger demonstrations broke out, the concession was canceled. "For a long time Iranians had been watching other people take control of their destiny," says John Woods, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Chicago. "The tobacco revolt was the moment when they stood up and said they'd had enough." That revolt crystallized the sense of outrage that had been building in Iran for more than a century. It also laid the groundwork for the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, in which reformers chipped away at the power of the dying Qajar dynasty by establishing a parliament and a national electoral system. Over the century that followed, many Iranian elections were rigged and many constitutional provisions were violated. Nonetheless, democracy is not a new idea for Iranians.

They have been struggling toward it for more than 100 years. That makes Iran fertile ground for democratic transition in ways that most nearby countries are not. "The ingredients are all there," says Barbara Slavin, recently a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation. "Iran has an established history of elections that has put people in the habit of going to the polls. Iranians are used to hearing different opinions expressed in parliament and in the press. They turn out to vote in great numbers, and hold elected officials accountable for their actions." Although the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 weakened the Qajar dynasty, it did not end it. That was fine with the Russians and British, who continued treating Iran like a colony. In 1907, the two nations signed a treaty dividing Iran between them. The British assumed control over southern provinces, guaranteeing them a land route to India, and Russia took over the north, ensuring it control over the region adjoining its southern border. No Iranian representative attended the conference in St. Petersburg at which this extraordinary treaty was signed.

Moscow's interest in Iran waned as Russia was consumed by civil war and then, in 1917, fell under Bolshevik rule. Britain moved to fill the vacuum. In 1919 it assumed control over Iran's army, treasury, transportation system and communications network through imposition of the Anglo-Persian Agreement, ensuring its approval through the simple expedient of bribing the Iranian negotiators. In a memorandum to his British cabinet colleagues, Lord Curzon defended the agreement, arguing that Britain could not permit the frontiers of its Indian Empire to descend into "a hotbed of misrule, enemy intrigue, financial chaos and political disorder." He garnished Britain's traditional rivalry with Russia with fears of Communist conspiracies: "If Persia were to be alone, there is every reason to fear that she would be overrun by Bolshevik influence from the north." The Anglo-Persian Agreement, which all but ended Iran's status as an independent state, sparked a second uprising in 1921. The Qajar dynasty was removed from power and replaced by a fiercely reformist dictator—an illiterate former stableboy who came to call himself Reza Shah (shah being the Persian word for "king").

In appearance Reza was an intimidating figure, "six foot three in height, with a sullen manner, huge nose, grizzled hair and a brutal jowl," the British chronicler Vita Sackville-West wrote after attending his coronation in 1926. "He looked, in fact, like what he was, a Cossack trooper; but there was no denying he was a kingly presence." That aptly captured Reza Shah's dual nature. He resorted to brutal tactics to crush bandits, tribal leaders and everyone else he saw as blocking his drive to re-establish Iran as a great power, but he also deserves credit for creating the modern Iranian state. He built the country's first railway, established a national bank and stripped clerics of much of their power. Shockingly, he banned the veil for women. The decree was so radical that many women refused to leave their homes. Although many Iranians were appalled by Reza Shah, they admired and supported him because they believed a strong central government was needed to fight back against foreign domination. It was during this period that the modern idea of what it meant to be Iranian began to take shape.

"Before the beginning of the 20th century, if you asked a villager where he was from, he would say he was from such-and-such village," says Janet Afary, a professor of history at Purdue University who has written extensively about the Constitutional Revolution. "If you pressed him about his identity, he would say he was a Muslim. National identification, in the sense of everyone in the country calling themselves Iranian, started with the intellectuals of the Constitutional Revolution and was institutionalized under Reza Shah." The Iranian government developed close economic and political ties with Germany, the European rival to Iran's traditional enemies, Britain and Russia. That relationship prompted the Allies to invade Iran in 1941. They crushed Iran's pitiful army in a campaign that lasted less than a month. This showed Iranians that despite all Reza Shah had accomplished, Iran was still too weak to resist foreign powers. It was yet another national humiliation, and led to Reza Shah's forced abdication in September 1941. His 21-year-old son, Mohammad Reza, took his place.

The winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism that swept across Asia, Africa and Latin America in the years after World War II whipped up a sandstorm in Iran. Since the early 20th century, the immeasurably rich Iranian oil industry had been under the control of a British monopoly, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which was owned principally by the British government. Iranian oil powered the British economy and made possible the high standard of living Britons enjoyed from the 1920s through the 1940s. It also fueled the Royal Navy as it projected British power around the world. Most Iranians, meanwhile, lived in wretched poverty. Anger over this glaring inequality triggered the next Iranian revolution, a peaceful but deeply transformative one. In 1951, Iran's parliament chose as prime minister one of the most highly educated men in the country, Mohammed Mossadegh, whose degree from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland made him the first Iranian ever to earn a doctorate in law from a European university. Mossadegh championed what had become the nation's transcendent goal: nationalization of the oil industry.

Even before taking office, he proposed a nationalization law that both houses of parliament passed unanimously. The British, to no one's surprise, refused to accept it. They withdrew their oil technicians, blockaded the port from which oil was exported and asked the United Nations to order Iran to withdraw the plan. Mossadegh's popularity at home skyrocketed; as a British diplomat wrote in a report from Tehran, he had done "something which is always dear to Persian hearts: he flouted the authority of a great power and a great foreign interest." Mossadegh's daring challenge to Britain also turned him into a world figure. Time magazine chose him as its 1951 Man of the Year. In October he traveled to New York City to plead his case at the United Nations. It was the first time the leader of a poor country had mounted this august stage to challenge a great power so directly. "My countrymen lack the bare necessities of existence," Mossadegh told the U.N. Security Council. "Their standard of living is probably one of the lowest in the world. Our greatest national resource is oil. This should be the source of work and food for the population of Iran.

Its exploitation should properly be our national industry, and the revenue from it should go to improve our conditions of life." Most American newspapers, however, were unsympathetic to Mossadegh's plea on the grounds that he was defying international law and threatening the flow of oil to the free world. The New York Times, for instance, decried Iran as a "defiant scorner" of the United Nations, and further blamed "Iranian nationalism and Islamic fanaticism" for carrying the dispute "beyond the field of legality and common sense." The epic struggle for control of the oil industry helped transform Iranian nationalism from an abstract idea into a movement. "While Reza Shah crafted the vessel, it was Mossadegh who filled it," says Iranian-British scholar Ali Ansari. "Between 1951 and 1953, Persian nationalism became truly Iranian—inclusive, broad-based and with increasing mass appeal." During this period, many Iranians came to hope the United States would emerge as their friend and protector. Most of the Americans who had come to Iran during the first half of the 20th century were teachers, nurses and missionaries who had left highly positive impressions.

That view changed abruptly in the summer of 1953, when the United States took a step that made it an object of deep resentment in Iran. After trying every conceivable way to pressure Mossadegh to abandon his nationalization plan, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered British agents to organize a coup and overthrow him. When Mossadegh learned of the plot, he closed the British Embassy in Tehran and expelled all British diplomats, including the agents who were plotting his overthrow. In desperation, Churchill asked President Harry S. Truman to order the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency to depose Mossadegh. Truman refused. "The CIA was then a new agency, and Truman saw its mission as gathering and collecting intelligence, not undermining or overthrowing foreign governments," says James Goode, a historian at Grand Valley State University in Michigan who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran and later taught at the University of Mashhad. "He was almost as frustrated with the British as he was with the Iranians." After President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in 1953, however, U.S. policy changed.

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was eager to strike back against growing Communist influence worldwide, and when the British told him that Mossadegh was leading Iran toward Communism—a wild distortion, since Mossadegh despised Marxist ideas—Dulles and Eisenhower agreed to send the CIA into action. "The intense dislike that Dulles and Eisenhower had toward Mossadegh was visceral and immediate," says Mary Ann Heiss, a historian at Kent State University who specializes in early cold war history. "They were not interested in negotiation at all. For Dulles, coming from a corporate law background, what Mossadegh had done seemed like an attack on private property, and he was bothered by what he saw as the precedent that it might be setting. He was also worried about the possibility that the Soviet Union might gain a foothold in Iran....It was all very emotional and very quick.

There was no real attempt to find out who Mossadegh was or what motivated him, to talk to him or even to respond to letters he was sending to Washington." In August 1953, the CIA sent one of its most intrepid agents, Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of president Theodore Roosevelt, to Tehran with orders to overthrow Mossadegh. Employing tactics that ranged from bribing newspaper editors to organizing riots, Roosevelt immediately set to work. From a command center in the basement of the U.S. Embassy, he managed to create the impression that Iran was collapsing into chaos. On the night of August 19, an angry crowd, led by Roosevelt's Iranian agents—and supported by police and military units whose leaders he had suborned—converged on Mossadegh's home. After a two-hour siege, Mossadegh fled over a back wall. His house was looted and set afire.

The handful of American agents who organized the coup were, as Roosevelt later wrote, "full of jubilation, celebration and occasional and totally unpredictable whacks on the back as one or the other was suddenly overcome with enthusiasm." Mossadegh was arrested, tried for high treason, imprisoned for three years, then sentenced to house arrest for life. He died in 1967. The 1953 coup put an end to democratic rule in Iran. After Mossadegh was deposed, the CIA arranged to bring Mohammad Reza Shah back from Rome, where he had fled during the pre-coup turmoil, and returned him to the Peacock Throne. He ruled with increasing repression, using his brutal secret police, Savak, to torture opposition figures. No independent institutions—political parties, student groups, labor unions or civic organizations—were tolerated during his quarter century in power. The only place dissidents could find shelter was in mosques, which gave the developing opposition movement a religious tinge that would later push Iran toward fundamentalist rule.

Throughout the cold war, relations between Washington and Tehran were exceedingly close, largely because the Shah was, as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoir, "that rarest of leaders, an unconditional ally." Iranians, for their part, came to see the United States as the force that propped up a hated dictatorship. "Iranians traditionally believed that the United States was not a colonial power, and older people remembered [President] Woodrow Wilson's anti-colonial views," says Mansour Farhang, who was the revolutionary government's first ambassador to the United Nations and now teaches history at Bennington College. "Even Mossadegh initially had great goodwill toward the United States. But during the 1950s and '60s, largely as a result of the 1953 coup and concessions the Shah made to the Americans, a new generation emerged that saw the United States as imperialist and neo-colonialist. As time went by, this perspective became completely dominant." Flush with money from oil revenues, the Shah sought to transform Iran into a regional military power. The United States sold him tens of billions of dollars' worth of advanced weaponry, which brought huge profits to U.S.

arms manufacturers while securing Iran as a powerful cold war ally on the Soviet Union's southern border. In the long run, though, this policy would have dire repercussions. "Some of the things the Shah purchased from us were far beyond his needs," notes Henry Precht, an American diplomat who served in Tehran during the 1970s and later became the State Department's desk officer for Iran. "Prestige and his fascination with military hardware played a great part. There was no rational decision-making process. It was the same way on the civilian side. There was tremendous waste and corruption. Shiploads of grain would arrive and there were no trucks to offload them, so they would just heap the grain in mountains and set it afire." Anger at the U.S. military presence and the Shah's dictatorial rule culminated in a national uprising in 1979. It was Iran's last modern revolution, like previous ones, a rebellion against a regime that was seen to have sold out to a foreign power. Nearly every important group in Iranian society joined the anti-Shah uprising.

Muslim clerics were prominent among its leaders, but so were others ranging from pro-Soviet communists to democrats who had supported Mossadegh in the 1950s. In one of the most astonishing political turnarounds of the 20th century, the Shah, who many in Washington and elsewhere had come to see as invulnerable, was overthrown and forced to flee. He left Iran on January 16, 1979, and after stays in Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas and Mexico, was admitted to the United States for medical treatment on October 22 of that year. Many Iranians saw this as evidence that the Carter administration was plotting to place him back in power. Thirteen days later, militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Fundamentalist Shiite clerics used the crisis to crush moderate factions, consolidate control over the new government and transform Iran into a theocratic state under Ayatollah Khomeini, who had returned from exile in Paris on February 1, 1979. The deepening hostility between Tehran and Washington led to a catastrophe that no one in Iran had anticipated.

Saddam Hussein, dictator of neighboring Iraq—which had been a rival of Iran since the two countries were the kingdoms of Persia and Mesopotamia—saw that Iran suddenly lacked a powerful ally and that its military was in disarray. Seizing this chance, he launched an invasion of Iran in September 1980. The ensuing war lasted eight years, devastated the Iranian economy and cost Iran as many as one million casualties, including thousands who were killed or incapacitated by chemical weapons. Iraq saw between 160,000 and 240,000 killed. The United States, still fuming over the hostage crisis, sided with Iraq, which it saw as a bulwark against Shiite militancy that threatened perceived U.S. interests such as the stability of the Sunni monarchies in oil-producing countries. President Ronald Reagan twice sent a special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, to Baghdad to discuss ways the United States could help Saddam. In the wake of his visits, Washington provided Iraq with aid, including helicopters and satellite intelligence that was used in selecting bombing targets. "The war had two profound effects," says Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations and Muslim politics at Sarah Lawrence College.

"First, it deepened and widened anti-American feeling in Iran and made anti-American foreign policy a fundamental raison d'être of the Iranian government. Second, Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and the American role in preventing an investigation [of them] and shielding Saddam from criticism, convinced the [Iranian] mullahs that they needed to pursue a program to develop unconventional weapons of their own." The hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War and the religious regime's intense efforts to undermine U.S. power in the Middle East and elsewhere have turned Iran and the United States into bitter enemies. To many Americans, the blame seems to lie only with a radical, aggressive and almost nihilistic regime in Tehran, which has threatened Israel, opposed U.S. efforts to resolve Middle East conflicts and has been linked to terrorism in cities from Berlin to Buenos Aires. Iran's current leaders—conservative Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the provocative, incendiary president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—skillfully exploit the country's nationalist sentiment, citing threats and demands from Washington to justify harsh crackdowns on students, labor unions, women and other dissatisfied groups.

Sometimes Ahmadinejad even defends these draconian measures while sitting in front of a photo of majestic Mount Damavand, a traditional nationalist symbol. "The regime feeds off American hostility," says Robert Tait, who spent nearly three years in Iran as a correspondent for the Guardian until he was forced to leave last December when the government refused to renew his visa. "Every time there's another threat from Washington, that gives them more oxygen. They won't be able to use this threat indefinitely. There's a widespread feeling in Iran that the way things are isn't the way they should be. People believe that too much isolation has not been good for them. But as long as there seems to be a clear and present danger, the government has what it sees as a justification to do whatever it wants." This justification is especially convenient at a time when growing numbers of Iranians are expressing their unhappiness with the government. Low wages, spiraling inflation, high prices for gasoline, discrimination against women, suffocating social controls, religious-oriented university curricula and the spread of social ills like prostitution and drug abuse have angered much of the population.

Some of this dissent hovers just beneath the surface of everyday life—as in Tehran, where a bus has been converted into a mobile discothèque to evade religious authorities. Other forms of dissent are more overt, and even go so far as to co-opt government idioms. Last fall, striking workers at a sugar factory chanted "Our salary is our absolute right!"—a play on the government slogan "Nuclear energy is our absolute right." The rhetoric of nationalism no longer satisfies Iranians. Their country has finally achieved independence, but now most wish for more: freedom, prosperity and engagement with the outside world. Iran will not be truly stable until its leaders offer them those great prizes. Former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer wrote All the Shah's Men and, most recently, A Thousand Hills, which documents the rebuilding of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. Like this article?

Question: Which year of the 20th century saw the Iranian Embassy siege in London ?
Answer: 1980