Case

134

Institute for the Study of Diplomacy

Case Study

The Iranian Hostage

Negotiations:
November 1979-January 1981
Andrew Steigman
photo source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:Iran_hostages_return.jpg
 Case 134

The Iranian Hostage Negotiations:

November 1979-January 1981

Andrew Steigman

ISBN 1-56927-348-0
Copyright © 1988 by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

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This case study was made possible (in part) by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The
statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.
The Iran Hostage Negotiations,
November 1979–January 1981
A NDRE W STEIG MAN
GEOR GE TOW N UNIVER S I T Y
INTRODUCTION
It was still early on Sunday morning, November 4, 1979,
when the crowd began to gather outside the sprawling
U.S. embassy compound in downtown Tehran. There
had been crowds on and off for nearly two weeks, ever
since the shah of Iran had been admitted to the United
States for medical treatment. There had even been a
massive demonstration and march three days earlier,
but police had kept most of the marchers away from the
embassy and made sure there were no incidents. That
was a good sign, and so too was the fact that the next
day the Foreign Ministry renewed its assurances that
the embassy would be protected.
Thus, there seemed every reason to expect that
Sunday’s crowd, like those of the previous two weeks,
would limit itself to anti-American slogans and calls for
the shah’s return to stand trial for his alleged crimes
against the Iranian people. Still, Chargé d’affaires Bruce
Laingen decided to take the added precaution of asking
the Foreign Ministry for extra protection, and went to
the ministry with two embassy officers around mid-
morning.
As they had done two days before, Foreign Minis-
try officials offered understanding and reassurance, but
just as Laingen and his colleagues left the ministry, sev-
eral of the students leading the demonstration in front
of the embassy went over the fence into the compound.
As hundreds more followed, the Iranian guards left
their posts, leaving embassy personnel on their own to
withstand the assault.
The embassy had been occupied briefly by Iranian
students in February, after which a great deal had been
done to make the main building more secure. Stronger
doors were installed, along with new grills and alarms,
and contingency plans were prepared to assure that
embassy personnel would be safe for the two or three
hours it might take local authorities to come to their
rescue; indeed, the defenses did their job. Although
demonstrators got into the basement and first floor of
the building, the Americans and visitors who retreated
to the second floor found a temporary, safe haven.
With the building partially occupied and no out-
side help immediately in sight, one of the embassy secu-
rity officers went out and attempted to reason with the
crowd. He was promptly seized and threatened with
execution unless the remaining Americans surrendered;
1
2 Andrew Steigman
those trapped in the embassy viewed the scene on the
closed-circuit TV system. When a Farsi-speaking politi-
cal officer went out to help his colleague, he too was
seized and threatened with death. At this point, the
Americans inside the embassy felt that their first prior-
ity was to save the lives of the two men held by the
crowd, so they too surrendered. A handful of staff mem-
bers stayed behind in the vault shredding documents,
and ten others remained in the separate building hous-
ing the consular section, but by mid-afternoon they too
were in the hands of the crowd.
By 3:30 p.m. Tehran time on that fateful Sunday,
sixty-three Americans were being held captive by the
demonstrators who had taken over the U.S. embassy
compound. How—and why—had it happened? What
could be done about it?
PART A
Iran—or Persia, as it had been known prior to the
1930s—was a country that few Americans knew well at
the time the hostage crisis erupted in 1979. It was not,
however, for want of involvement. The United States
first focused seriously on Iran during World War II.
Britain and the Soviet Union had occupied the country
in 1941 to keep it out of German hands and had
installed twenty-three-year-old Mohamed Reza Pahlavi
on the throne in place of his father. At the 1943 Tehran
conference, Franklin Roosevelt drew Winston
Churchill and Josef Stalin into a joint pledge to respect
Iran’s independence and territorial integrity when the
war ended.
It took renewed U.S. involvement in 1945–46 to
make the Soviets honor their part of the bargain. U.S.
pressure, both directly and at the United Nations, was
critical in persuading the Soviets to withdraw from the
puppet state they had set up in their zone of occupation
in northern Iran, and, thus, in consolidating the young
shah in power.
When the next threat to the shah arose in the early
1950s, the United States again played a key role in help-
ing him maintain his rule. In a surge of nationalist fer-
vor, the Iranian parliament in 1951 nationalized the
British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Britain
responded with a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil,
which served only to fuel the fires of Iranian national-
ism. Over the ensuing two years, the shah found himself
increasingly challenged by Mohammed Mossadegh,
whom he had named prime minister and who was seek-
ing to augment his own power at the shah’s expense. As
the struggle continued, Mossadegh’s popular support
began to slip, leaving him with solid backing only from
the communist-led Tudeh party. The threat of renewed
Soviet influence galvanized the United States into
action, this time in the form of Central Intelligence
Agency backing for successful action by the armed
forces to oust Mossadegh and restore the shah’s author-
ity.
With the Mossadegh challenge behind him, in 1963
the shah embarked on his “White Revolution”—an
ambitious program to transform Iran both economi-
cally and militarily. Once again, the United States was to
play a key role. The United States became the principal
source of the technology needed to modernize the Ira-
nian economy, of many of the ideas that underlay the
Westernization of Iranian society, and of nearly all the
weaponry essential for insuring that the Iranian armed
forces could protect the country against external ene-
mies and the shah against any further domestic threats.
Fueled by the massive oil revenues of the late 1960s and
early 1970s, the Iranian economy boomed, and prosper-
ity (along with repression) silenced all but a handful of
the critics of the shah’s authoritarian methods.
After 1972, the U.S.-Iranian relationship became
even more special, as President Richard Nixon and Sec-
retary of State Henry Kissinger cut a deal with the shah
that had no counterpart in U.S. relations with the Third
World. In effect, Nixon and Kissinger offered the Shah
carte blanche in buying U.S. non-nuclear weaponry in
exchange for a commitment to assume the role of West-
ern policeman in the Persian Gulf region. With the
United States reluctant to take on overseas commit-
ments in the wake of the Vietnam experience, Nixon
and Kissinger saw this as the best way to block Soviet
influence in this vital area. For his part, the shah was
delighted to be free of the restraints on his appetite for
arms previously imposed by more cautious U.S. admin-
istrations, and could thus look forward to transforming
Iran into the dominant power in the region. (Indeed,
the shah ordered more than $9 billion in weapons dur-
ing the next four years, making Iran the United States’
best customer for arms exports.)
When Jimmy Carter succeeded Gerald Ford in the
White House in 1977, he sought to bring arms sales
under better control, but he made no fundamental
 The Iran Hostage Negotiations
change in the special relationship with Iran crafted by
his predecessor. Carter’s emphasis on human rights
worldwide came into play regarding Iran, but only in
the form of quiet suggestions to the shah that he moder-
ate the more repressive aspects of his rule. Indeed,
Carter gave the shah solid endorsements when the two
men met in Washington in late 1977 and again in Teh-
ran on New Year’s Day 1978. Iran, Carter said, was “an
island of stability in a turbulent corner of the world”—
and, in U.S. eyes, the shah was Iran.
Yet, even as the president and the shah were
cementing the U.S.-Iranian alliance, the stability of the
shah’s rule was being challenged. The pace of modern-
ization had sparked opposition from conservative cler-
ics as early as 1963, when riots in the Shi`i religious
center at Qom were rigorously suppressed and the
shah’s severest critic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
was first internally exiled and then expelled from the
country. With the leader of the conservative opposition
out of circulation, the clerics remained quiescent for
more than a decade, and objections to the shah’s rule
and policies were muted by a repressive police force
and by the benefits that accompanied the nation’s new-
found prosperity.
As the economic boom slowed in the mid-1970s,
cracks began to appear in the structure of the shah’s
regime. Economic and social change had not been
accompanied by the development of political structures
capable of articulating the concerns felt by significant
elements of the population over the pace and direction
of reform, mounting corruption, and the authoritarian
nature of the shah’s rule. Opposition came both from
members of the Westernized elite, who supported the
shah’s efforts to propel Iran into the twentieth century
but sought a more open and democratic political sys-
tem, and from religious conservatives, whose principal
target was the reform effort that secular opponents of
the regime wanted to preserve.
Despite their deep differences, these diverse
groups found one thing on which they could all agree:
The real problem was the shah. Some moderates among
both the secular and clerical opposition would have
been content to settle for a constitutional monarchy,
although Reza Pahlavi had become personally unac-
ceptable because of the excesses of his security police,
the notorious SAVAK; others wanted no part of Pahlavi
rule—a heading covering every political shading from
3
the Tudeh’s advocacy of a communist regime to the
Islamic model presented by fundamentalist clerics.
At the beginning of 1978, the growing discontent
erupted into major demonstrations in Qom, the Shi`i
center from which Khomeini had been expelled four-
teen years earlier. The deaths of several demonstrators
at the hands of the police led to clerical charges that the
shah’s regime was anti-Islamic and to a cycle of demon-
strations and repression that grew more and more
severe. With U.S. encouragement, the shah attempted
to defuse the growing hostility to his rule by instating
measures aimed at political liberalization alongside the
application of force.
The attempt proved to be too little and too late, as
the shah and his ministers consistently underestimated
the depth of dissatisfaction. Repeated efforts to build a
new government structure that could alleviate popular
pressure while maintaining the shah in power proved
unsuccessful, and the cycle of demonstration and
repression continued throughout the remainder of
1978. Finally, on January 16, 1979, the shah left Iran,
ostensibly to seek medical treatment abroad, and Aya-
tollah Khomeini returned from exile two weeks later to
become the dominant figure on the Iranian political
scene.
How could this sudden reversal in the fortunes of
the shah have come as such a surprise, both to him and
to his U.S. allies? It occurred in part because the shah
presided over a highly authoritarian regime in which he
was the only decision-maker that counted. In the
absence of legal channels through which the people of
Iran could make their views known, the shah came to
depend on a close circle of advisers who tended to tell
the shah what they thought he wanted to hear and to
play down unpleasant news. The shah also believed that
the armed forces could be counted on as the ultimate
guarantor of his regime. They had restored him to his
throne once before, when Mossadegh had threatened
him—and he was sure they would defend him again.
Because of the special relationship between the
shah and his U.S. allies, the United States had almost as
much of a vested interest in the shah’s survival as he did.
For Washington, Iran without Reza Pahlavi was not
something to be contemplated lightly, since Iran’s com-
mitment to a role as protector of Western interests in
the Persian Gulf had been made personally by the shah
and might not last beyond his reign. Given this mindset,
it was not surprising that the United States was careful
4 Andrew Steigman
not to do anything that might have displeased the shah,
or in any way hinted at a lessening of U.S. interest in his
survival.
Unfortunately for U.S. intelligence, nearly all con-
tacts with the Iranian opposition were regarded with
suspicion by the shah and, thus, were severely limited.
Some members of the moderate secular opposition,
who were part of the Westernized elite, met embassy
officers at Tehran social events, but they provided no
access to the clerics and their growing number of fol-
lowers. Devoid of first-hand information on the nature
and depth of dissatisfaction, the United States was
forced to rely largely on information provided by
SAVAK, which had close ties to U.S. intelligence agen-
cies. Unfortunately, SAVAK proved in the end much
better equipped to deal with the secular opposition
than with the clerics, whom it appears to have consis-
tently underestimated.
For the Americans, as for many moderate Iranians,
religious fundamentalism was not seen as a serious mat-
ter in Iran. The shah, after all, had been embarked for
nearly two decades on a modernization program that
included such Western ideas as secular rule and the
emancipation of women, leaving little political role for
religion. The power of the clerics had seemingly been
broken by the shah in 1963, when Khomeini was sent
into exile. Iranian prime minister Jamshid Amouzegar
reflected this mindset when he commented in 1977 that
“the reactionary mullahs are finished; Iran has moved
beyond them.” Also, as one U.S. official later remarked,
“Who ever took religion seriously?”
Like Amouzegar, many members of the secular
opposition made the same mistake. They too assumed
that the Shi`i clergy would play only a limited role in a
post-shah regime, serving as the keepers of the public
conscience but leaving government to the Western-
trained technocrats. The shah’s programs might be
reined in somewhat and made somewhat compatible
with Islamic law, but the basic thrust of moderniza-
tion—bringing Iran fully into the late twentieth cen-
tury—would continue. Indeed, many members of the
clergy made this same assumption and would have been
content with a constitutional order that recognized the
role of Islam but did not seek revolutionary change.
That the outcome in Iran was in fact so different
from the anticipated scenario was due almost entirely to
one man—Ayatollah Khomeini—who had spent much
of his fourteen-year exile developing ideas for an
Islamic republic. Khomeini had made no secret of his
views, but they seemed so outlandish to other elements
of the opposition that a more moderate outcome was
taken for granted. Not until Khomeini returned to Teh-
ran as the undisputed leader of the Iranian masses did it
become fully evident that he was not prepared to com-
promise on the basic tenets of his Islamic republic. At
that point, the secular opposition began to realize that
they had gotten more than they bargained for.
As long as the shah was the target of the people’s
dissatisfaction, the various elements of the opposition
had a rallying point. With his departure, their differ-
ences rapidly became apparent. Although Khomeini
picked the relatively moderate Mehdi Bazargan to head
the first post-shah government, the ayatollah was
clearly the power behind the scenes. This quickly
became evident when Khomeini refused to help the
Bazargan government gain control over a network of
revolutionary komitehs that had sprung up throughout
the country and constituted local power centers in
competition with the central authority. Since most
komitehs seemed to respond primarily to the local
clergy, they proved a useful vehicle for the extension of
Khomeini’s personal power, and over the ensuing
months he gradually incorporated them into his own
political base.
It was in this setting that Khomeini began his drive
to transform Iran into the Islamic republic he had envi-
sioned. The first step was a national referendum at the
end of March 1979 in which Khomeini insisted that the
population be offered only a stark choice between the
monarchy and an undefined Islamic republic. Not sur-
prisingly, the republic was the unanimous choice—but
what republic? To shape the institutions of the future
state, a constitution was required. Several leaders of the
secular opposition had prepared a draft along Western
lines, stressing democratic procedures, civil liberties,
and human rights, and providing only an oversight role
for the Islamic clergy. It was in many ways a return to
Iran’s original 1906 constitution—but without the mon-
archy—and probably would have found wide accep-
tance. Once again, however, the secular opposition had
misread Khomeini’s intentions.
Khomeini paid no attention to their draft constitu-
tion, but called instead for a constituent assembly to
draft a new constitution; he moved vigorously to ensure
that the assembly’s membership would produce the
outcome he sought. Khomeini had by then established
 The Iran Hostage Negotiations
his own political party, with backing from the loose
structure of komitehs and from loyal elements of the
mojahedin guerrilla groups, and used it to impose rules
for the constituent assembly elections, assuring that the
assembly would be filled with pro-Khomeini clerics. Of
the seventy-three members of the assembly that met in
August 1979, fewer than a dozen were willing to speak
out against Khomeini’s wishes. The constitution that
emerged institutionalized the ayatollah’s vision of a
republic guided by Islamic principles, whose ultimate
interpreter was to be a “supreme guide”—i.e., Kho-
meini—who was thus officially recognized as the real
power in Iran.
Although Khomeini’s packed assembly had over-
whelmingly endorsed the new constitution, there were
many in Iran who regarded it with dismay. Secular ele-
ments of the original opposition to the shah were
appalled at the extent of clerical control under the pro-
posed constitution, fearing that much of the modern-
ization of Iran that they had welcomed would be
undone. Among the clergy, there was disagreement
over Khomeini’s insistence on the position of supreme
guide because there was neither precedent nor doctri-
nal justification in Shi`i Islam for it. New political par-
ties were created in opposition to the constitution,
which still faced the test of a public referendum.
Khomeini moved quickly to consolidate his power,
whipping up public support for a campaign against
Kurdish demands for autonomy and closing down a
number of opposition publications. The draft constitu-
tion still faced serious challengers, however, including
Bazargan, Khomeini’s hand-picked prime minister.
Although he too was deeply religious, Bazargan saw the
structure envisaged by the constitution as a perversion
of the revolution and protested it both publicly and pri-
vately in meetings with Khomeini. As already noted,
Bazargan’s concerns were shared by other members of
the Westernized intelligentsia and by more traditional
clergy disturbed at the departure from Islamic tradition
implied in the notion of a supreme guide. In addition,
provincial unrest and political uncertainty were perpet-
uating economic chaos, and the universities—already
sites of demonstrations against the Islamicization of the
revolution—were about to reopen. As opposition to the
draft constitution began to coalesce, by mid-October
Khomeini began to seek a new way of rallying popular
support for his cause. The shah provided a timely focus.
5
Reza Pahlavi had been suffering from cancer for
several years, so his departure for “medical reasons” in
January 1979 did have some truth to it. Living in exile in
Mexico, his condition steadily worsened, and by the fall
of 1979 he was in need of specialized treatment most
readily available in New York. The suggestion that the
shah go to the United States for treatment posed a
dilemma for the Carter administration.
Because the United States had for so many years
been closely associated with the shah, Iranians who had
opposed the shah (and who now ruled in Tehran)
blamed the United States as much as the shah for the
actions and policies that sparked the revolution. In their
eyes, the United States had put the shah back on the
throne in 1953 and had been the power behind that
throne ever since; such close allies of the shah were sim-
ply not to be trusted.
Regardless, the United States had been trying to
restore some semblance of normal relations with the
new authorities in Tehran. Not surprisingly, this proved
difficult to do. The United States was seen by many Ira-
nians as a potential threat to the survival of the new
regime. Just as Iranians believed the United States had
been the power behind the shah, they now feared that
the United States would seek to overturn the revolu-
tion and reinstate the monarchy. This concern was par-
ticularly acute among those segments of the Iranian
leadership with whom the United States had the least
contact—the clerics who held the real power and who
almost without exception had no direct knowledge or
experience of the world outside Iran.
A proposed meeting with Khomeini while he was
in exile had been rejected by Washington for fear that it
would be perceived as undermining the shah, and Kho-
meini showed no interest in bridging the gap after his
return to Iran. Following his example, and fearing that
association with the United States might open them to
charges of plotting against the revolution, most clerics
and many other Iranians avoided the embassy and its
personnel. Americans in Tehran thus found their offi-
cial contacts limited to the relative moderates who
served in the Bazargan government, and had no oppor-
tunity to explain U.S. policies to Khomeini or his cleri-
cal followers.
It was clear that allowing the shah to go to New
York would probably be seen in Tehran as further evi-
dence of U.S. collusion with the ousted monarch, and,
therefore, might trigger anti-American actions in Iran.
6 Andrew Steigman
The Carter administration was reluctant to take that
risk, but at the same time did not wish to be seen as
turning its back on a former friend and ally. Finally per-
suaded that the shah’s medical condition could be ade-
quately treated only in the United States, Carter agreed
to admit the shah, who checked into a New York hospi-
tal on October 22.
For about a week afterward, things were quiet in
Tehran. Then, however, Khomeini seemingly decided
that the presence of the shah in New York offered him
the opportunity to rally Iranians behind his leader-
ship—and in doing so, to silence the opposition to the
draft constitution and its provisions for an Islamic
republic. The tone of Khomeini’s speeches sharpened in
the last few days of October, mixing attacks on his
domestic opponents as “traitors dependent on the
West” with demands that the United States send the
shah back to Iran.
As tensions were rising in Tehran, Prime Minister
Bazargan and Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi flew to
Algiers to represent Iran at an anniversary celebration
at which the senior U.S. representative was National
Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Taking advan-
tage of the opportunity afforded by their presence
together in Algiers, the three men met on November 1
to discuss the future of U.S.-Iranian relations in a fol-
low-up to a meeting the previous month at the United
Nations between Yazdi and Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance. Unfortunately for the Iranians, the Algiers meet-
ing was more public than the one in New York, and they
were photographed shaking hands with Brzezinski at
the end of the session. When the pictures appeared the
next day on Iranian television, Bazargan—already vul-
nerable because of his outspoken opposition to the
draft constitution—was even more vulnerable to his
attackers than ever before.
It was in this atmosphere that a small group of mili-
tant students made their plans to seize the U.S. embassy.
They were encouraged by several of the leading clerics
in Khomeini’s entourage, and given added impetus by a
Khomeini radio address on November 1 in which the
ayatollah concluded an extensive denunciation of the
United States with a statement seemingly calculated to
inspire action: “It is up to the dear pupils, students and
theological students to expand with all their might their
attacks against the United States . . . so that they may
force the United States to return the deposed Shah. . .”
The students who planned and executed the
November 4 embassy takeover—a curious mixture of
zealous Shi`as and leftist radicals—wanted to dramatize
their demand for the return of the shah and to block
normalization of relations with the United States. Those
with backing from supporters in the pro-Khomeini
clergy also hoped that forcing the removal of the mod-
erate Bazargan government would end Bazargan’s influ-
ence as an opponent of the draft constitution.
The students apparently expected their occupation
of the embassy to be relatively short-lived, somewhat
along the lines of the previous takeover in February.
Within hours, however, their actions acquired powerful
and widespread backing. As word of their success
spread through the city, huge crowds gathered in the
square outside the embassy compound to cheer them
on, and television cameras made them headline news
around the world. Recognizing the depth of popular
support for the embassy takeover, Ayatollah Khomeini
gave the students his personal blessing by sending his
son Ahmed to the embassy on Sunday evening, Novem-
ber 4, to tell the occupiers, in his father’s name, that “all
the Iranian nation supports your action.”
Meanwhile, Chargé d’affaires Laingen and his two
colleagues had returned to the Foreign Ministry after
they got word on the car radio that the embassy was
under attack. Yazdi and other ministry officials repeated
their earlier assurances that Iran would honor its obliga-
tion under international law to protect the embassy and
promised that help would be forthcoming. As Sunday
wore on with no relief for the embassy, it became obvi-
ous that the ministry was not in a position to deliver on
its promises. Fresh statements of support for the stu-
dent militants came on Monday, November 5, from the
ayatollah and several of his closest associates, further
exposing the impotence of the Bazargan government.
Bowing to the inevitable, Bazargan submitted his resig-
nation to Khomeini the following day, November 6.
The departure of Bazargan, Yazdi, and the other
members of the Bazargan government removed the last
voices of relative moderation from the Iranian political
scene, and it also wiped away all the senior officials with
whom the United States had dealt. They were replaced
by a Revolutionary Council dominated by Khomeini
supporters, men whom the United States for the most
part did not know and who knew equally little about
the United States. The members of this group, along
 The Iran Hostage Negotiations
with the student militants at the embassy, now held the
fate of the American hostages in their hands.
Sitting in the Department of State Operations Cen-
ter on Sunday morning, November 4, how would you
deal with the following questions:
What event(s) precipitated the hostage-taking?
What do the various Iranian factions want at this
point? Do their declared aims reflect their real
goals? What assumptions are they making? Are the
Iranians likely to be interested in negotiation?
What should U.S. strategy and tactics be at this
point?
If negotiation seems desirable, with whom can the
United States deal?
PART B
News of the attack on the embassy reached Washington
around 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, November 4,
because of the seven-and-a-half-hour time difference
between Tehran and the east coast of the United States.
Secretary of State Vance and other senior officials
assembled in the Operations Center of the Department
of State; the secretary woke President Carter with the
news shortly after 4 a.m.
The initial inclination within the U.S. government
on that Sunday was to rely on the assurances that
Bazargan and Yazdi had already given Laingen, and to
keep a relatively low profile while the Iranians lived up
to their promises and secured the release of the hos-
tages. After all, the embassy had been seized by mili-
tants once before, in February, and the Iranian
authorities had been reasonably prompt in freeing the
seized U.S. personnel.
By the next morning, however, after Ahmed Kho-
meini had expressed his father’s support for the
embassy takeover, the situation appeared considerably
more grim. While there was still a faint hope that
Bazargan and Yazdi might be able to persuade the aya-
tollah to order that the hostages be freed, there was
increasing recognition that Iranian domestic politics
were likely to complicate the problem. A meeting that
convened on Monday, November 5, at the White House
7
thus started to explore steps the United States might
take to help convince the clerics in Iran that prompt
release of the hostages would be in their interest.
The two-track strategy that the United States
would pursue over the next six months was tentatively
developed on that Monday morning. The primary
emphasis was to be on negotiation, but a small group
was designated to develop contingency plans for mili-
tary action either to rescue the hostages or to punish
Iran for continuing to hold them captive. The negotiat-
ing track got the greatest attention, both in initial meet-
ings and over the ensuing months.
From the beginning, the primary objective of the
U.S. government was to ensure the safety of the hos-
tages, and there was understandable concern that mili-
tary action might endanger their lives. Thus, so long as
negotiations held out even a slim prospect of success,
there was no real likelihood that military action would
be undertaken—although recurrent efforts were made
to make the threat of military action appear credible in
order to keep the Iranians off balance and, hopefully, to
increase the pressure on them to release the hostages.
Indeed, one of the key assumptions on the U.S. side was
that the Iranians could be pressured into releasing the
hostages.
In addition to keeping open the possibility of mili-
tary action, the United States steadily escalated eco-
nomic and diplomatic pressures, even as negotiations
continued, and sought the cooperation of allies in
applying sanctions against Iran. The United States con-
sistently assumed that Iran would respond to external
pressure as other states might, and that there would
come a point where Khomeini would recognize that the
price for keeping the hostages was too high even for the
domestic political benefits he was reaping from Iran’s
confrontation with the United States. In the end, this
assumption proved to be a serious misreading of the sit-
uation inside Iran. The U.S. administration’s failure to
understand fully the depth of Khomeini’s commitment
to his concept of Islamic revolution meant that U.S. pol-
icies were resting on a shaky foundation.
Although they may have misjudged the depth of
Khomeini’s determination to make his revolution suc-
ceed, U.S. officials realized that the ayatollah and his
entourage were the key to the hostage crisis. If any fur-
ther evidence was needed, the failure of Bazargan and
Yazdi to make good on their assurances about freeing
the hostages made it abundantly clear that established
8 Andrew Steigman
channels to the Iranian government were not enough.
Thus, as early as November 5, the United States began
to look for other channels and other interlocutors capa-
ble of getting messages directly to Khomeini.
The first emissaries chosen by the administration
were former attorney general Ramsey Clark and senior
Senate staffer William Miller, both of whom had come
to know members of Iran’s clerical leadership while the
shah was still in power. They were to carry a message
stating the U.S. desire to see the hostages freed
promptly, reaffirming U.S. support for the territorial
integrity of Iran, and expressing willingness to discuss
outstanding issues between the two countries. News of
their mission leaked, however, and was featured on eve-
ning newscasts, at which point the Iranians refused to
receive them. It was a harbinger of things to come.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) did
slightly better. Evidently hoping to obtain some credit
with the United States, the PLO sent a three-man dele-
gation to Tehran at the urging of Austrian chancellor
Bruno Kreisky to see what they could accomplish.
Despite long-standing ties to the Iranian Revolution,
the PLO representatives found the going difficult. After
ten days of hard negotiations, they managed to obtain
the freedom of thirteen black and female hostages, the
majority remaining captive. Seemingly discouraged
both by its limited influence with the Iranians and by
the lack of rewards from the United States for its efforts,
the PLO never again participated in efforts to resolve
the hostage crisis.
The Iranian decision to release the group of black
and female hostages reflected a lack of understanding of
the United States that mirrored U.S. misperceptions of
Iran. Many Iranians persisted in believing that they
could gain the sympathy and support of the American
people by demonstrating the justice of their cause. Stu-
dents at the embassy took advantage of every opportu-
nity to present their case in the United States through
press and television interviews, in which they con-
stantly stressed the crimes of the shah and sought to
portray the hostages as accomplices in those evil deeds.
In particular, they accused the hostages of being spies,
rather than diplomats, and on several occasions threat-
ened to put them on trial for espionage. Freeing the
black hostages reflected a belief that black Americans
saw themselves as an oppressed class likely to feel spe-
cial kinship with the Iranian Revolution, and, thus,
could be won over by a gesture of this kind. A proposal
to free two Hispanic Americans and an American
Indian in December—ultimately torpedoed by prema-
ture publicity—seemingly was based on the same mis-
guided motivation.
Another early intermediary was Habib Chatti, sec-
retary general of the Organization of the Islamic Con-
ference, who provided the United States with the first
explicit statement of Iran’s demands for resolution of
the hostage crisis. There were four Iranian demands in
the message he delivered:
a. the shah returned to Iran;
b. the shah’s assets in the United States turned over
to the Iranian government;
c. a U.S. apology for harm done to Iran in the past;
d. a U.S. pledge not to intervene in future Iranian
internal affairs.
While the United States was prepared to offer a
non-intervention pledge, it was not prepared either to
apologize or to treat the shah as a sacrificial lamb; his
wealth was a matter for U.S. courts to decide. There was
thus little encouragement in the initial Iranian position
and little immediate likelihood of finding a basis for set-
tlement.
As prospects for a quick solution of the crisis
dimmed, the United States started looking closely at
ways of increasing pressure on Iran. On November 12,
imports of Iranian oil were formally banned, and Ira-
nian assets in the United States were frozen two days
later to preempt Iran’s intended transfer of the funds to
other countries. U.S. naval forces were reinforced in late
November with the transfer of an additional carrier task
force to the Arabian Sea in preparation for possible mil-
itary action. Although President Carter continued to
stress the United States’ desire to resolve the situation
peacefully, the movement of naval units was intended to
underline the seriousness of a private warning from the
president to Iranian leaders that there would be prompt
retaliation if any of the hostages were harmed.
The United States also turned to the international
community for support. At the end of November, the
United States asked the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) to rule on the legality of Iran’s action in seizing
the embassy and holding U.S. personnel hostage. A
 The Iran Hostage Negotiations
unanimous ICJ decision on December 15, coupled with
an order to Iran to release the hostages, put the weight
of international law behind the U.S. position, but was
dismissed as irrelevant by Khomeini and by the stu-
dents who occupied the embassy. Shortly afterward,
Khomeini told a visitor that international law as applied
by the ICJ basically did not concern Iran. Iranians had
played no part in shaping it, he said, and it had done
nothing to protect Iranians against external interven-
tion under the shah. Why then, Khomeini concluded
rhetorically, should Iran now feel itself bound by its
rules?
For the United States, however, the ICJ decision
provided the legal framework for a subsequent appeal
to the United Nations for assistance in obtaining the
hostages’ release. At the request of the United States,
the UN Security Council—in an 11–0 vote on Decem-
ber 31—called on Iran to free the hostages within one
week or face the threat of international sanctions. As it
had done with the ICJ decision, Iran dismissed the
Security Council resolution as irrelevant and refused to
comply. Two weeks later, the second resolution impos-
ing sanctions was put to a vote, but was defeated by a
Soviet veto; the vote was 10–2 in favor of sanctions.
This was the second U.S. failure at the United
Nations. The first had come in November, when Secre-
tary of State Vance and then-Iranian foreign minister
Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr had come tantalizingly close to
agreement on the draft text of a resolution that might
have led to freedom for the hostages. On the eve of
Bani-Sadr’s scheduled return to New York for the
debate at which the draft resolution was to have been
introduced, he was abruptly dismissed as foreign minis-
ter. His successor, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, presumably
speaking with Khomeini’s backing, declared that there
was “no room for negotiation at present” between Iran
and the United States. For the frustrated Americans,
this was a painful reminder that it was hard to know
who had the authority to speak for Iran.
The collapse of the effort to secure UN backing for
sanctions soon led to a further disappointment when
the United States’ European allies backed away from
earlier promises to implement multilateral sanctions
even in the absence of a UN resolution. Part of the rea-
son for European reluctance was economic and com-
mercial, since Iran represented both an important
supplier of oil and a valuable market. Economics alone,
however, were not the whole answer. Another factor
9
was the changed political situation in the region follow-
ing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 27,
1979. The Soviet action prompted a reappraisal of the
potential Soviet threat to Iran, and European govern-
ments argued that the proposed sanctions might desta-
bilize Iran and offer fresh opportunities for Soviet
penetration. In the end, the European Community did
not apply even limited sanctions on trade with Iran
until May 1980, when they had only a marginal impact
on the outcome of the hostage crisis.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan also prompted a
reappraisal in the United States, where actions designed
to bring pressure on Iran now had to be measured
against the risks of destabilization. Since the United
States had by January virtually exhausted the prospects
for legal and diplomatic pressure without any positive
response from Iran, the administration in its frustration
might have been tempted to try the military option—
for which contingency plans continued to be formu-
lated. While President Carter ordered that the strategy
of combining pressure with efforts at negotiation con-
tinue without abatement, the Soviet presence in
Afghanistan made military action against Iran appear
more risky than it previously had.
Despite the unpromising circumstances, the early
months of 1980 brought fresh (and at times frenzied)
activity on the negotiating front. Although much of it
took place behind the scenes, one very public channel
again involved the United Nations. In December, Secre-
tary-General Kurt Waldheim agreed to act as intermedi-
ary for a plan to air Iranian grievances before a UN
commission as a step toward release of the hostages.
Waldheim went to Tehran at the beginning of January
in search of Iranian agreement, but received a hostile
(and at times threatening) reception from which he
returned shaken and empty-handed.
Meanwhile, Iran had a new government, and the
United States was trying another channel for negotia-
tions. In Iran, former foreign minister Bani-Sadr had
been overwhelmingly elected on January 25 as the first
president of the Islamic republic, and Sadegh Ghotbza-
deh, an unsuccessful contender for the presidency, had
become foreign minister. Although both men had close
ties to Khomeini, they believed that it was in Iran’s
interest to resolve the hostage crisis so that the country
could focus on rebuilding its shattered economy. Their
new prominence on the Iranian scene gave added credi-
bility to Christian Bourguet and Hector Villalon, the
10 Andrew Steigman
unlikely intermediaries who had come to the United
States’ attention a few weeks earlier.
Bourguet was a left-wing French lawyer who had
represented Ghotbzadeh when the latter was in exile in
Paris, and Villalon was an Argentine businessman with
a checkered background who was a close friend of
Bourguet and of the Iranian inner circle. For the U.S.
administration, their appeal lay in their access to the
Iranian leadership—to Ghotbzadeh directly, and to Aya-
tollah Khomeini through Ghotbzadeh’s personal ties to
him. Even with this access, they were a long shot, but
dozens of other channels had been tried without suc-
cess, and a desperate U.S.administration was prepared
to grasp at straws.
Bourguet and Villalon came to the United States’
attention indirectly, when Ghotbzadeh called on his old
friends to draw up papers to have the shah extradited
from Panama to Iran to stand trial. After the shah com-
pleted his medical treatment in New York, both he and
his U.S. hosts had expected him to return to Mexico—
an event, it was hoped, that would remove a major
stumbling block to the release of the hostages. On
November 28, however, the Mexican government
announced that the shah would no longer be welcome
in Mexico, thereby precipitating a hurried search for an
alternative haven that would permit the shah’s early
departure from the United States. In response to an
appeal from President Carter carried personally by
White House chief of staff Hamilton Jordan, Panama-
nian president Omar Torrijos agreed to accommodate
the shah in Panama, thereby setting the stage for the
Bourguet-Villalon role.
The shah had arrived in Panama on December 15
after receiving assurances from Torrijos that he would
be treated as an honored guest. The extradition request
thus posed a real dilemma for the Panamanians. Despite
their promises to the shah, the Panamanians believed
that some gesture in the direction of extradition might
provide the Iranians with a justification for release of
the hostages. Thus, even though they were not pre-
pared to return the shah to Iran, the Panamanians were
willing to have an extradition request considered in
their courts.
When the Panamanians became aware of the access
in Tehran enjoyed by Bourguet and Villalon, they
alerted the Jordanian leadership, whom Torrijos had
come to know and trust during the effort to secure rati-
fication of the Panama Canal treaties. Jordanian repre-
sentatives, in turn, got approval from President Carter
to test this new channel, and made several semi-clan-
destine trips to Europe to meet with the new intermedi-
aries.
The plan initially worked out with Bourguet and
Villalon centered on sending a UN commission to Teh-
ran to investigate Iranian grievances as part of a compli-
cated scenario that would lead to the release of the
hostages. When the Iranians reneged on a promise to
let commission members meet with the hostages, how-
ever, the commission left Tehran without issuing any
report on its findings—and without any progress on the
hostage issue. Stage two of the Bourguet-Villalon sce-
nario involved using a formal request to Panama for
extradition of the shah as a justification for transferring
the hostages from student hands to government con-
trol. This scenario failed, because the shah left Panama
for Egypt before the Iranians could file their request for
his extradition.
There was a final attempt at the beginning of April
to break the impasse over the hostages. In a message
delivered on March 27, President Carter reminded the
Iranians of their earlier promise to place the hostages
under government control, and warned them of harsh
new sanctions if this was not achieved by the end of the
month. On April 1, Bani-Sadr renewed the pledge in a
radio broadcast, which also called for an assurance that
the United States refrain from any hostile act against
Iran. Although the United States provided the assur-
ance he sought, Bani-Sadr once again proved unable to
deliver as promised.
As had been the case in the past, the obstacles
related primarily to Iranian domestic politics. On the
day the UN commission had arrived in Tehran, Febru-
ary 23, Khomeini had proclaimed in a radio address that
the final resolution of the hostage question would be
left to the new Majlis, the Iranian parliament, to be
formed following a two-stage election process in March
and April. Thus, the Bourguet-Villalon negotiations and
the late March ultimatum all took place against the
background of the campaigning and elections for the
Majlis, a critical step in the institutionalization of Kho-
meini’s Islamic republic.
In this situation, neither President Bani-Sadr nor
Foreign Minister Ghotbzadeh felt secure enough to risk
a confrontation with the student militants. Bani-Sadr
did obtain an 8–3 vote in the Revolutionary Council in
favor of transferring control of the hostages from the
 The Iran Hostage Negotiations
students to the government, but the decision was
vetoed by Khomeini on the nominal grounds that una-
nimity was lacking. In fact, Khomeini, although he had
accepted Bani-Sadr in the presidency and treated Ghot-
bzadeh like a son, probably was unwilling to commit his
own political prestige on their behalf at a time when
popular sentiment still favored the student captors—
and when he needed support from the militants for his
Majlis candidates. Once again, divided authority and
internal political dynamics doomed a potentially prom-
ising approach.
In Washington, meanwhile, the Carter administra-
tion faced growing national frustration over the hostage
stalemate. The fate of the American captives in Tehran
was daily front-page news in major newspapers across
the country, while network newscasts brought the story
into American living rooms every evening and the
nation bloomed with yellow ribbons as a symbol of soli-
darity with the hostages. Adding to the sense of urgency
in the White House, Senator Edward Kennedy was
mounting a strong campaign for the Democratic presi-
dential nomination, and the Carter staff was getting
nervous about the possible negative impact of the presi-
dent’s inability to resolve the hostage crisis.
Against this background, and with negotiations
having failed again, attention in Washington shifted to
ways of increasing the pressure on Iran. On April 7,
President Carter announced the breaking of diplomatic
relations and the expulsion of the remaining Iranian
diplomats from the United States—others had been
expelled in December 1979—as well as a total embargo
on U.S. exports to Iran, with the exception of medicine
and foodstuffs. Since freedom for the hostages seemed
hopelessly enmeshed in the slow unfolding of Kho-
meini’s Islamic revolution, the policy review also
included reexamination of the military options that had
been held in abeyance since the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. Contingency plans had been prepared
both for a blockade of Iran—including mining Iranian
ports—and for a rescue operation, but there was con-
cern that a blockade would push Iran into the arms of
the Soviets and cause serious repercussions throughout
the Middle East. Thus, a decision was taken on April 11
to attempt a rescue operation, which despite its risks
seemed to offer the only prospect for speedy resolution
of the crisis.
The rescue mission, dubbed Operation Blue Light,
demanded precise timing and flawless execution if it
11
was to work. In the end, it was defeated by bad weather
and mechanical failure, as two of the eight helicopters
required for the operation were forced to turn back and
a third broke down, forcing abandonment of the plan.
Eight U.S. airmen died in a collision on the ground at
the desert site in Iran that was to serve as the initial
staging area. The failed attempt led to a separate negoti-
ation, with yet another intermediary, to obtain the
return of their bodies.
For the Iranians, the failure of the rescue attempt
provided an opportunity to exult once again over the
defeat of the “Great Satan,” as they called the United
States. It also led the student militants to disperse their
hostages outside the embassy compound, making
another rescue attempt even less likely to succeed. In
Washington, the failure of Operation Blue Light effec-
tively eliminated the option of military rescue of the
hostages. More than ever, it looked as though the
United States would have to wait for the Iranian politi-
cal drama to play itself out before the release of the hos-
tages.
At this point in time, how would you answer these
key questions:
How did U.S. assumptions about the Iranians
change? Why?
Were there parallel changes in Iranian assump-
tions?
How did the Iranians respond to U.S. initiatives?
What else might the United States have done?
Were there other options?
Why was the rescue mission attempted?
What strategy and tactics would you now recom-
mend?
PART C
The failure of the rescue mission led to a prolonged
lull in efforts to resolve the hostage crisis. In Washing-
ton, Secretary of State Vance resigned in protest over
the rescue attempt, which had been carried out over his
objections, and was replaced by Senator Edmund
12 Andrew Steigman
Muskie. In Tehran, there was some crowing over the
U.S. failure, but otherwise the Iranians responded with
relative moderation to the rescue operation. The run-
off election for the Majlis was held in mid-May and the
new parliament convened for the first time on May 28,
dominated by clerical supporters of Khomeini. The
institutions of the Islamic republic were taking shape,
but there was still no government in place either willing
or able to take action on the hostage issue.
The first break in the stalemate came on July 27,
with the death of the shah in Cairo. His death made
moot the initial Iranian demand that the shah be
returned to stand trial, a demand the United States had
consistently said it would not meet. The path to possi-
ble negotiation was being cleared, but additional incen-
tives were needed. These were not long in coming.
In the United States, it was a presidential election
year, and President Carter’s primary battle with Senator
Kennedy had provided a backdrop to all policy deci-
sions taken throughout the spring. From the Iranian
point of view, however, the critical event was the choice
of Ronald Reagan as the Republican nominee to oppose
Carter in November. During the primaries, Reagan had
been sharply critical of the Carter administration’s
approach to Iran, and had portrayed himself as an advo-
cate of harsher measures to secure the release of the
hostages. The possibility of his election alarmed the Ira-
nian leadership, and provided a major incentive to set-
tle the issue while President Carter was still in the
White House.
The second incentive was provided by Iraq, which
issued an ultimatum to Iran on September 8, launched
incursions into Iranian territory the following day, and
mounted a full-scale invasion two weeks later. Taking
advantage of Iran’s internal disorder and economic dis-
array, the Iraqis scored substantial initial gains, putting
the Iranians on the defensive.
It was against this background that the Majlis on
September 10 gave formal approval to a new govern-
ment headed by Mohammed Ali Rajai as prime minis-
ter—the first government elected under the full terms
of the new constitution. Khomeini had said that the
hostage crisis could not be resolved until the institu-
tions of the Islamic republic were in place, and this con-
dition had finally been satisfied.
It was the Iranians who now took the initiative to
seek a settlement. The Iranian intermediary, identified
by the German ambassador in Tehran, was Sadegh
Tabatabai, a brother-in-law of Ayatollah’s Khomeini’s
son, Ahmed. With the approval of the ayatollah, Tabata-
bai on September 10 asked the Germans to inform the
Americans of Iran’s newly defined conditions for release
of the hostages—and to add that Ayatollah Khomeini
would personally confirm them in a speech scheduled
for delivery on September 12. As Tabatabai had prom-
ised, the conditions were duly included at the end of a
speech by Khomeini that otherwise dealt largely with
the Iraqi invasion. In the speech, Khomeini asked for:
a. the return of the shah’s wealth, or at least U.S.
support for court action toward that end;
b. the unfreezing of the blocked Iranian assets in the
United States and their transfer out of the United
States;
c. the cancellation of U.S. claims against Iran;
d. guarantees that there would be no U.S. interven-
tion in Iranian internal affairs.
The demand for a U.S. apology had been dropped,
and the return of the shah rendered moot. For the first
time since the crisis began ten months earlier, there
appeared to be a reasonable basis for serious negotia-
tion. Equally important, it was now the Iranians who
wanted to move quickly toward a settlement.
Initial negotiations took place in Germany in mid-
September 1980 between Tabatabai and Deputy Secre-
tary of State Warren Christopher; between them, they
managed to define most of the outstanding issues, but
there were still obstacles to be overcome. The Majlis,
reacting sharply to the Iraqi invasion and convinced the
United States was behind it, agreed in late September
only to set up a commission to define Iranian terms for
resolution of the hostage issue. Two further stimuli
were required before the Majlis would return seriously
to the fate of the hostages. The first was a statement by
Secretary of State Muskie publicly asserting U.S. neu-
trality in the Iran-Iraq conflict; the second was a mid-
October visit to New York by the Iranian prime minis-
ter. When Rajai went to New York to plead Iran’s case
against Iraq before the United Nations, he was shocked
to learn that even delegations basically friendly to Iran
were reluctant to offer support until Iran ended its defi-
ance of the world community and released the Ameri-
 The Iran Hostage Negotiations
can hostages. Shaken by the experience, Rajai returned
to Tehran and prodded the Majlis to act. Even then, it
took two weeks of often rancorous debate before the
Majlis granted formal approval on November 2 to the
four conditions initially defined by Khomeini. Only
then did Iran ask the Algerian government, whom the
Iranians had chosen to serve as intermediary, to convey
the four conditions officially to the United States.
From this point on, it remained only to settle the
details, in a process reminiscent at times of haggling
over merchandise in a bazaar. With the Algerians serv-
ing as mediators, outstanding issues were clarified and
differences painstakingly narrowed in a series of
exchanges. Just as agreement seemed to be approach-
ing, however, the Iranians on December 19 presented a
“final offer” in which they demanded $24 billion in
“guarantees” to be placed in escrow accounts before the
hostages would be released.
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS AFFECTING THE IRAN HOSTAGE NEGOTIATIONS
1945–46
U.S. and UK pressure induces Soviet withdrawal from
northern Iran
1953
Iranian military, with CIA support, restores shah to
throne after overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammed
Mossadegh
1963
Clerics led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini challenge
shah’s reform programs; rioting in Qom suppressed
1964
Khomeini exiled to Iraq
1971
UK withdraws forces from Persian Gulf
1972
May U.S. president Richard Nixon visits Tehran and
confirms special relationship with shah, allowing Iran
near-unlimited access to U.S. weaponry; in return, shah
accepts role as protector of Western interests in the Per-
sian Gulf
1978
January 1 U.S. president Jimmy Carter, meetingwith
13
Once again, the Iranians had misread their U.S.
interlocutors, seemingly assuming that the Carter
administration would pay any price to resolve the issue
before leaving office. When the United States firmly
rejected the Iranian demand and presented a counter
offer in the $5–6 billion range, the Iranians proved will-
ing to bargain further. Evidently very much aware that
the inauguration of a new U.S. president on January 20
could call the entire negotiation into question if agree-
ment had not been reached, the Iranians settled for a
U.S. pledge of non-intervention and a $7.9 billion pack-
age that included the return of a portion of their frozen
assets.
As soon as the fund transfer was completed, the
hostages were permitted to leave Tehran. It was January
20, 1981; it had taken 444 days to negotiate their free-
dom.
Why did Iran decide to negotiate in September
when it had been unwilling to do so earlier?
shah in Tehran, describes Iran as “an island of stability
in a turbulent corner of the world”
January 7 Government-controlled press publishes
article ridiculing Khomeini, who has continued to
preach opposition to shah in exile.
January 9 Rioting erupts in Qom and is suppressed
with loss of life; incident triggers cycle of protests and
further suppression during ensuing months
July Article published in Iran alleges that during the
preceding twenty years the United States sold more
than $18 billion in arms to Iran and helped organize
shah’s security system
August 2 Shah declares his commitment to free elec-
tions and greater political freedom
August 18 Three hundred seven people killed by fire
in Abadan movie theater; government inaction blamed
for high death toll
September 8 Police fire on demonstrators in Jaleh
Square in Tehran, leaving many dead and wounded
September 10 White House statement “reaffirmed the
close and friendly relations between Iran and the
United States”
October 7 Khomeini expelled from Iraq to France
14 Andrew Steigman
November 5 Prime Minister Jafar Sharif-Imami resigns
following major rioting in Tehran; General Gholam
Reza Azhari named prime minister
November-December Strikes spread, sharply reducing
oil output and crippling economy
December 10–11 More than 1 million Iranians demon-
strate in Tehran against shah to mark the Shi`i holy days
of Tassua and Ashura
1979
January 3 Majlis approves Shahpour Bakhtiar as
prime minister; Khomeini calls new government illegal
because Bakhtiar’s initial appointment came from shah
January 16 Shah leaves Tehran for Cairo; Khomeini
reiterates opposition to Bakhtiar government
January 24 United States announces emergency airlift
of gasoline and diesel fuel as gesture of support to
Bakhtiar government
January 25 Bakhtiar offers to resign and let Iranian
people choose between a republic or monarchy
January 31 Khomeini returns to Tehran
February 5 Khomeini appoints Mehdi Bazargan as
prime minister of provisional government
February 10 Bakhtiar government collapses
February 14 U.S. embassy in Tehran seized by leftist
guerrillas; pro-Khomeini forces disperse the attackers
and free U.S. personnel
February-May A number of officials who served
under shah are executed, including senior generals and
former prime minister Amir Abbas Hoveida
March 30–31 In a national referendum, 97 percent of
Iranian voters opt to replace the monarchy with unde-
fined “Islamic republic”
April 1 Khomeini proclaims an “Islamic republic”
May 6 Khomeini orders formation of Revolutionary
Guards “to protect the revolution”
May 17 U.S. Senate adopts resolution condemning
executions in Iran
May 20 Iran requests delay in arrival of new U.S.
ambassador
May 21 Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi makes concil-
iatory remarks about United States at press conference,
and notes alleged U.S. willingness to continue assis-
tance programs
May 24 Fedayin militants attempt to enter U.S.
embassy compound, but are rebuffed by Revolutionary
Guards
June 4 Iran asks United States not to send its ambassa-
dor designate
July 23 Khomeini bans all music from Iranian radio
August 1 Iran cancels $9 billion worth of U.S. arms
orders previously placed by shah
August Constituent Assembly, dominated by Kho-
meini supporters, convenes to prepare draft constitu-
tion creating Islamic republic under the leadership of a
“supreme guide”
August 24 Carter statement urges restraint but sup-
ports Iranian efforts to end Kurdish insurgency
October 22 Shah arrives in New York for medical treat-
ment
November 1 Bazargan and Yazdi meet in Algiers with
U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski;
major demonstration in Tehran protests shah’s presence
in United States; Iranian authorities keep demonstra-
tors away from U.S. embassy
November 2 Iranian Foreign Ministry assures Chargé
d’affaires Bruce Laingen that U.S. embassy will con-
tinue to be protected
November 4 Student militants seize U.S. embassy in
Tehran and take about 100 hostages, including 63
Americans; Khomeini sends message of support
November 6 Bazargan government resigns, ceding
authority to Revolutionary Council; Abol-Hassan Bani-
Sadr becomes foreign minister
November 7 Khomeini refuses to receive U.S. presi-
dential envoys Ramsey Clark and William Miller, who
are denied entry into Iran
November 8 United States halts shipment of military
spare parts previously ordered by Iran
November 10 The United Nations urges prompt
release of hostages; Carter instructs attorney general to
review status of estimated 50,000 Iranians in the United
States and to institute deportation proceedings against
those found to be in the United States illegally
November 12 Carter orders suspension of oil imports
from Iran and describes hostage-taking as “terrorism”
November 14 Carter freezes Iranian assets in U.S.
banks and their foreign branches to forestall Iranian
withdrawals
 The Iran Hostage Negotiations
November 17 Thirteen black and female hostages
released following intervention by the Palestine Libera-
tion Organization
November 20 Carter orders carrier task force moved
from Philippines into Indian Ocean
November 21 White House official warns Iran that the
potential for U.S. military action should be taken seri-
ously and that Iran will be held “strictly accountable” if
hostages are physically harmed
November 22 Shah flies from New York to Lackland
Air Force Base in Texas to continue convalescence
November 28 Sadegh Ghotbzadeh replaces Bani-Sadr
as foreign minister
November 29 Mexico announces that shah will not be
allowed to return there
November 29 United States petitions International
Court of Justice (ICJ) for prompt legal judgment on
hostage-taking
December 1–2 Creation of the “Islamic republic”
approved in national Iranian referendum
December 11 Panamanian president Omar Torrijos
agrees that shah may enter Panama
December 12 United States expels all but thirty-five of
two hundred eighteen Iranian diplomats in United
States to increase pressure on Iran
December 15 Shah flies to Panama; ICJ rules unani-
mously that the Iranian hostage-taking is illegal and
orders Iran to release the U.S. hostages and restore U.S.
property; student militants in Tehran reject the court’s
decision
December 27 Soviet troops enter Afghanistan
December 31 UN Security Council, in an 11–0 vote—
with four abstentions—calls on Iran to free hostages
within one week or face a vote on sanctions
1980
January 1 UN secretary-general Kurt Waldheim
arrives in Tehran
January 13 UN Security Council votes 10–2 to impose
sanctions on Iran for failure to release hostages; Soviet
veto defeats the resolution
January 25 Bani-Sadr elected president of Iran
February 7 United States says it is delaying imposition
of additional economic sanctions against Iran to avoid
undermining Bani-Sadr and because of undisclosed dip-
lomatic activity
15
February 11 Bani-Sadr suggests formula for release of
hostages, again requiring U.S. admission of past
“crimes” in Iran, a pledge of non-interference, plus rec-
ognition of Iran’s right to obtain return of shah and his
wealth
February 13 At a press conference, Carter says he
would agree to a “carefully-designed . . . appropriate
commission” to help resolve the hostage crisis
February 14 Waldheim receives Iranian assurances
that hostages will be released following an inquiry by an
international commission into Iranian grievances
against shah
February 16 Carter says the United States regrets
“misunderstandings” it has had with Iran; White House
later denies that this represents apology demanded by
Bani-Sadr
February 17 United Nations announces formation of
commission to investigate shah’s rule in Iran
February 23 UN investigative commission arrives in
Tehran; Khomeini declares that fate of hostages will be
decided by the Majlis, scheduled to be elected in April
March 11 UN commission leaves Tehran after admit-
ting failure to help resolve crisis
March 23 Shah leaves Panama for Egypt
Late March First round of Majlis elections held
Late March Carter sends private message to Bani-Sadr
establishing an April 1 deadline for progress toward
release of hostages, failing which the United States
would take additional measures against Iran
April 1 Bani-Sadr, in response to Carter’s message,
says control of hostages will be transferred from stu-
dents to Revolutionary Council if United States refrains
from provocative acts or statements until Majlis can act;
Carter calls Bani-Sadr message a “positive step” and
withholds additional sanctions, but Bani-Sadr insists
that all Iranian conditions be met before hostage trans-
fer can take place
April 3 Carter sends another message promising U.S.
restraint “in our words and actions” as long as progress
is being made to resolve crisis; Bani-Sadr says Carter’s
new message meets conditions for hostage transfer
April 6 Revolutionary Council votes 8–3 to accept
transfer of hostages from student control
April 7 Khomeini overrules Revolutionary Council
and orders students to retain custody of hostages until
Majlis decides their fate; United States announces sev-
16 Andrew Steigman
ering of diplomatic relations with Iran and bans U.S.
exports to Iran
April 17 United States bans financial transfers to Iran
and imports from Iran, and begins process of drawing
on frozen Iranian assets to pay U.S. claimants; Carter
warns that further steps may be taken, including mili-
tary action
April 24 U.S. military attempt to rescue hostages fails
April 28 Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigns
because of his opposition to the rescue attempt; Vance
replaced by Senator Edmund Muskie
May 9–10 Second round of Majlis elections confirms
strong majority for Khomeini supporters
May 18 European Common Market imposes limited
sanctions on Iran
May 24 ICJ orders Iran to release hostages and rules
that Iran is liable for reparations
May 28 Majlis holds first formal meeting
July 20 Hojatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
elected Speaker of Majlis
July 27 Shah dies in Cairo
August 9 Majlis agrees on Mohamed Ali Rajai as prime
minister
September 8 Iraq delivers ultimatum to Iran
September 9 Iraqi troops cross border into Iran
September 10 Majlis approves government headed by
Prime Minister Rajai; Revolutionary Council is dis-
solved
September 12 In radio address devoted largely to
problems with Iraq, Khomeini redefines conditions for
settling hostage crisis, omitting previous demand for
U.S. apology; United States responds cautiously
September 16 U.S. deputy secretary of state Warren
Christopher holds first meeting in Bonn with Iranian
intermediary Sadegh Tabatabai
September 22 Iraq launches massive invasion of Iran
Mid-October Rajai attends UN General Assembly ses-
sion in New York
FURTHER READINGS
Those interested in additional information and insights into
the Iran hostage crisis may wish to read one or more of the
following works used in preparing this case study.
Alexander, Jonah, and Allan Nanes, eds. The United States and
November 2 Majlis sets four conditions for hostage
release: (1) pledge of U.S. non-interference; (2) release
of frozen Iranian assets; (3) withdrawal of all claims
against Iran; and (4) U.S. recognition of and support for
return of shah’s wealth to Iran; Carter describes Majlis
action as positive step
November 6 Ronald Reagan wins U.S. presidential
election
November 11 Christopher presents U.S. response to
Iranian demands to Algerian mediaries for transmis-
sion to Iran
November 20 Muskie says United States has accepted
four Majlis conditions as basis for negotiations
December 1 Christopher carries new U.S. message to
Algiers
December 19 Iranian demand for $24 billion in “guar-
antees” to be placed in escrow presented as “final offer”
December 21 Iranian demand for $24 billion called
“unacceptable” by Muskie
December 28 United States publishes response to Ira-
nian demands, revealing proposals for release of frozen
assets and resolution of other issues
December 29 Christopher says U.S. counterproposal
offers escrow of $5–6 billion
1981
January 4 Iranian attack on Iraqi positions repulsed,
but with heavy loss of tanks and other equipment
January 15 Iranian officials reduce demand from
United States to $8 billion and offer to pay in full all out-
standing loans to U.S. banks
January 16 U.S. draft embodying terms developed
over several weeks of negotiation is sent to Iran for final
agreement
January 19–20 Terms of U.S.-Iranian agreement
implemented with the transfer of funds to escrow
account
January 20 U.S. hostages released on their 444th day
of captivity as Ronald Reagan takes presidential oath of
office
Iran: A Documentary History. Frederick, MD: University
Publications of America, 1980.
A compendium of diplomatic correspondence and
other materials relating to U.S.-Iranian relations; the
 The Iran Hostage Negotiations
source for several documents included in the annex to
this case study.
“America in Captivity.” New York Times Magazine, May 17,
1981.
This special issue of the magazine presents a compre-
hensive overview of the hostage crisis in a series of arti-
cles by leading journalists who had covered parts of the
story.
American Hostages in Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985.
Chapters on various aspects of the hostage crisis and
the U.S. response written by officials involved in U.S.
decision-making during the crisis period.
Bill, James A. The Shah, the Ayatollah, and the U.S. Headline
Series, no. 285. New York: Foreign Policy Association,
1988.
This abbreviated version of Bill’s major study of U.S.
relations with Iran, The Eagle and the Lion, offers a quick
review of major factors (and problems) in the relation-
ship.
Ioannides, Christos P. America's Iran: Injury and Catharsis.
Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984.
This concise analysis of the U.S.-Iranian rupture offers
particularly good insights into the views and motiva-
tions of the student militants responsible for the
embassy takeover.
Jordan, Hamilton. Crisis. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1982.
The hostage crisis as seen by the White House chief of
staff; particularly helpful in relating the U.S. domestic
political situation to U.S. decision-making.
Kennedy, Moorhead. The Ayatollah in the Cathedral. New
York: Hill and Wang, 1986.
A highly personalized account by one of the hostages in
Tehran in late 1979 and of the hostage experience.
Limbert, John. Iran: At War with History. Boulder, CO: West-
view Press, 1987.
An overview of Iranian history which places the Iranian
Revolution in context. Although written by a former
hostage, he makes no direct reference to the hostage
crisis.
17
Rodman, Peter W. “The Hostage Crisis: How Not to Negoti-
ate.” Washington Quarterly 4, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 9–24.
A critical evaluation of U.S. strategy and tactics during
the hostage crisis.
Rubin, Barry. Paved with Good Intentions: The American
Experience and Iran. New York: Oxford University Press,
1980.
A thoughtful analysis of the misperceptions that
marked the history of U.S.-Iranian relations and of the
way they affected the hostage crisis.
Salinger, Pierre. America Held Hostage. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday & Company, 1981.
A journalist’s account of the hostage crisis, with consid-
erable detail on the multiple negotiating channels tried
by the United States.
Sick, Gary. All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with
Iran. New York: Random House, 1985.
The best single source on the U.S. decision-making pro-
cess, written by the National Security Council staff
member principally responsible for Iran during the cri-
sis.
Stempel, John D. Inside the Iranian Revolution. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1981.
The internal politics of the Iranian Revolution,
described by a scholar who also served in Tehran from
1975 through 1979.
U.S. Department of State. Digest of United States Practice in
International Law, 1979; 1980. Edited by Marian Nash
Leich. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
1986; 1988.
These two volumes in the annual series offer the law-
yers’ view of the U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis, and contain
documents relating to legal actions taken in the United
States and in international fora.
Waldheim, Kurt. In the Eye of the Storm: A Memoir. New York:
Adler & Adler, 1985.
Chapters I and II present Waldheim’s view of his role in
the hostage crisis; useful in conveying the hostile atmo-
sphere prevailing in Tehran when he visited there in
early January 1980.