Iran: 40 years ago, release of American hostages from Tehran embassy
The 52 American hostages, released from the embassy on January 20, 1981, pose 5 days later, returned to the United States.
AFP - -
Text by: Lou Roméo Follow
8 min
This January 20, 1981, it is a beautiful gift that leaves to Ronald Reagan his Democratic predecessor, the outgoing President of the United States Jimmy Carter.
40 years ago, the 52 American hostages at the embassy in Tehran were released.
Their detention constitutes one of the longest and one of the most serious diplomatic crises in contemporary history.
For 444 days, it marks the beginning of disputes over American power in the Middle East, and upsets the trajectory of the Iranian revolution.
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On January 20, 1981, 12 minutes after the inauguration of Republican Ronald Reagan, the 52 American hostages from the Tehran embassy were released.
52, like the
number of Iranian bases targeted by Donald Trump
in January 2020, after the rise in Kabul of pro-Iranian militias and the assassination of
Iranian General Soleimani.
The former president was ultimately not lacking in historical culture.
On November 4, 1979, after a daily demonstration in revolutionary Tehran, students climb the walls of the American Embassy.
Claiming to be "
of the line of imam
" Khomeini, they accuse the former American friend of spying.
It is true that the Shah, fallen ruler for barely 10 months, arrived in New York a month earlier to treat his cancer.
Iranians fear that the CIA will once again help it, as it did in 1953, to regain power in the country.
They demand the extradition of their former sovereign.
Students climb the compound of the American embassy in Tehran and demand the extradition of the Shah, November 4, 1979. AFP - STR
The students therefore enter the diplomatic enclosure.
They come under tear gas grenades, but no more: the
marines
present are ordered not to fire.
The Americans are outnumbered, but more importantly, they still rely on help from the Provisional Government.
Chaired by Mehdi Bazargan, of liberal Islamo-nationalist tendency, this one is indeed trying to resume good relations with the West to counter the influence very close to the USSR.
The embassy was attacked in February 1979 by Marxist groups, and the Iranian revolutionary power sent its own forces to defend them.
But not this time.
The image of Americans, blindfolded, detained at the Tehran embassy, toured the world in 1979. AFP - STAFF
A second revolution, even more important than the first
“
We do not know if Ayatollah Khomeini was warned or not
, summarizes Ehsan Manoochehri, editor-in-chief of
our Persian language editorial team
.
But he supported the hostage taking and encouraged the students
”
.
From the city of Qom, 150 kilometers from the capital, the leader of the Islamic revolution quickly understands where his interest lies.
"
It's a real policy
," continues the historian Yann Richard, author of Iran, from 1800 to the present day.
He will also pronounce this extraordinary sentence:
"it is a second revolution, even more important than the first".
"
And he is not wrong.
The hostage-taking quickly escapes its organizers.
Thought to last barely 48 hours, the international media coverage it provokes has triggered the support of crowds.
Secret documents are seized by the demonstrators.
Hundreds of thousands of people sit in front of the gate every day.
Unable to act, the government of Mehdi Bazargan resigns.
In front of the United States Embassy in Tehran, where American hostages are held, December 31, 1979. ASSOCIATED PRESS - HERVE MERLIAC
In any revolutionary process, factions and groups, always on the move, clash.
The hostage-taking at the embassy is a boon for Khomeini's.
"
Khomeini understood the political importance of this mobilization to breathe new life into his revolutionary movement
,"
testifies Ahmad Salamatian, Iranian deputy minister for foreign affairs at the time.
Upheaval of the revolutionary process
His project for an Islamic constitution, and in particular the principle of
Velayet-e faqih
,
which gives the religious - and the guide who embodies him, Ayatollah Khomeini - primacy over the rest of the political institutions, meets with criticism.
The mobilization around the hostage-taking made it possible to unite the crowds around the American enemy and to declare a state of war against imperialism.
"
This is how the bellicose identity of the Islamic Republic is born,"
denounces Mahnaz Shirali, sociologist at Sciences Po Paris.
The hostage-taking enshrined the takeover of the revolutionary process by the radicals.
A logic of one-upmanship is essential within the Iranian revolution.
Khomeini thwarted the efforts of President Bani Sadr, elected in January 1980, to resolve the crisis.
Liberals, Marxists, religious of other factions: all opposition is gradually eliminated.
In addition to profoundly disrupting the Iranian political situation, the hostage-taking also has consequences in the United States.
Democrat Jimmy Carter is deeply discredited by his inability to end the crisis.
The failure of
Operation
Eagle Claw
in April 1980 - American helicopters crashed in the Iranian desert due to technical failure caused by sandstorms - dealt him a terrible blow.
He lost the November 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.
The operation to free the hostages is a failure.
At the end of April 1980, several American helicopters crashed in the desert.
AFP
Strained relations
For its part, weakened by the attack on Saddam Hussein in September 1980 and the start of the war with Iraq, the Iranian authorities ended up agreeing to negotiate under the aegis of Algeria.
On January 19, 1981,
the Algiers agreements were adopted
.
The 52 hostages were freed the next day, the day of Reagan's inauguration, under several conditions, including the lifting of the freeze on Iranian assets in the United States and the absence of trade sanctions against Iran.
But if the crisis ends without causing casualties, relations between the two countries will never recover.
The first economic measures and the oil embargo adopted in November 1979 will call for others.
“
The hostage crisis marks the birth of Iran's foreign policy
,” concludes Ehsan Manoochehri.
Its isolation on the international scene continues today
”.
Diplomatic relations,
broken on April 7, 1980
, have not been reestablished.
Since then, Switzerland and Pakistan have taken on the role of intermediary.
“
The Iranian revolution has become the hostage of the hostage-taking
, breathes Ahmad Salamatian.
The Iranian people are still paying it today
”.
And the whole region, too.
“
The troubles in the Middle East began in this hostage-taking
,” says Yann Richard.
Since 1979, it is no longer the American order that imposes relative peace.
Immediately after the hostage-taking in Tehran, Sunni extremists outbid things by storming the great mosque in Mecca;
then, after a few weeks, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
The war between Iraq and Iran begins a few months later, followed by the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, the wars in the Caucasus, Yemen, the explosion of Afghanistan, Iraq and the Syria.
The Palestinian conflict, the only one that tore apart the Muslim world in 1978, disappeared forty years later, eclipsed by the implosion of the whole region, an implosion whose starting point and source can be seen in this famous takeover. hostages, in the Iranian anti-American revolt.
"
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