{"id":21045,"date":"2018-11-04T10:22:44","date_gmt":"2018-11-04T10:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=21045"},"modified":"2018-11-04T10:22:44","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T10:22:44","slug":"1979-hostage-crisis-irans-long-history-of-antagonism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=21045","title":{"rendered":"1979 hostage crisis: Iran\u2019s long history of antagonism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nDUBAI: When a group of Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran 39 years ago this Sunday, taking more than 60 Americans hostage, it marked the start of a long and precipitous decline in relations between then two countries.
Now, almost four decades later, the anniversary of the embassy takeover coincides with a fresh round of economic sanctions to be imposed on the Islamic republic. The sanctions follow the US withdrawal from the 2015 international agreement on Iran\u2019s nuclear program, and will hit Iran\u2019s shipping, finance and energy sectors.
In 1979, the American hostages were seized by Iranian students demanding the extradition of Iran\u2019s ruler, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was in the US receiving treatment for cancer (he had fled from Iran to Egypt in January). The issue escalated rapidly after the storming of the embassy. The following day Iran ended military treaties with the US and the Soviet Union, which allowed for military intervention. Then, on Nov. 6, Ayatollah Khomeini took power.
\u201cThe hostage crisis was the first time the American public acquired a negative view of Iran,\u201d Mark Katz, professor of government and politics at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said this week.
\u201cOf course, many Iranians had long had a negative view of the US, stemming from the 1953 Mossadegh episode (the overthrow of Iran\u2019s prime minister) and the subsequent US support for the shah. I well remember how Iranian students frequently demonstrated against the shah\u2019s regime and US support for it during the 1970s.\u201d
Matters worsened when US president Jimmy Carter sent former attorney general Ramsey Clark and Senate Intelligence Committee staff director William Miller to Iran on Nov. 7 to negotiate the release of the hostages, and Khomeini refused to meet with them. One week later, Iranian assets in US banks were frozen \u2014 the first of many restrictions on the Islamic republic.\"\"
\u201cThe hostage crisis had a profound effect on American views of Iran,\u201d Katz said. \u201cBefore the Iranian revolution, Iran was seen as an ally; afterwards it was seen as unremittingly hostile and even irrational. This was partly because most Americans had no notion of Iranian grievances against the US.\u201d
On Nov. 19 and 20, women and African-American hostages were freed, leaving 53 Americans captive in the embassy. Although the United Nations had passed a resolution in early December 1979 calling for Iran to release the hostages, President Carter cut diplomatic ties with Iran in April 1980, imposing more sanctions and ordering all Iranian diplomats to leave the US.
\u201cThe hostage-taking marked the moment American-Iranian relations began deteriorating,\u201d said Riad Kahwaji, founder and CEO of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. \u201cBut relations were not always the way they are today. When the shah was in power, relations were extremely good between both countries \u2014 Iran was more or less Washington\u2019s main strategic ally in the region.\u201d
Kahwaji said Iran had a status that was equivalent, if not higher, than Israel with respect to the US. \u201cThe weapons given to the shah were even more advanced than those given to Israel,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it was a high-level strategic relationship. At that time, Iran was openly and publicly, with US knowledge and indirect support, starting its own nuclear program as well.\u201d
The hostage-taking came as a major shock. \u201cThe revolution was a blunder on the part of American intelligence, which didn\u2019t expect it to happen,\u201d Kahwaji said. \u201cSo the revolution and the subsequent hostage-taking was a major setback in relations between the two countries.\u201d
On Jan. 20, 1981, 444 days after the storming of the embassy, the US hostages were released and flown to Wiesbaden air base in Germany. The release was negotiated after the US and Iran signed an agreement to free Iranian assets.
Today, as Iran prepares to face a new set of sanctions imposed by the US, experts look back on the events of 1979 as among the most significant and far-reaching in the region.
\u201cIran was the number one ally to Israel in the region and it became the number one enemy,\u201d Kahwaji said. \u201cSo, with the revolution, Iran shifted 180 degrees and all of its previous allies became its main enemies, and vice versa.\u201d
New alliances emerged in the region. \u201cSubsequently, with the Iran-Iraq war, we had Iran on the side of everything that opposed the US and the West, and it still is today,\u201d he said. \u201cThe whole political landscape in the Middle East changed.\u201d
On Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the new sanctions would deprive Iran of the revenues \u201cthat it uses to spread death and destruction around the world. Our ultimate aim is to compel Iran to permanently abandon its well-documented outlaw activities and behave as a normal country.\u201d
He said the sanctions were a part of a US government effort to change the behavior of the Iranian regime.
\u201cOn Nov. 5, the US will reimpose sanctions that were lifted as part of the nuclear deal on Iran\u2019s energy, ship-building, shipping and banking sectors,\u201d he said.
\u201cThese sanctions hit at the core areas of Iran\u2019s economy. They are necessary to spur changes we seek on the part of the regime and our actions today are targeted at the regime, not the people of Iran, who have suffered grievously under it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DUBAI: When a group of Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran 39 years ago this Sunday, taking more than 60 Americans hostage, it marked the start of a long and precipitous decline in relations between then two countries.Now, almost four decades later, the anniversary of the embassy takeover coincides with a fresh round…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":21046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}