Effects of Iranian Hostage Crisis
How Has the Iranian Hostage Crisis Affected the United States?
For most Americans, the story begins in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, when a group of revolutionary university students took over the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and held 52 American diplomats, intelligence officers and Marines hostage for 444 days. But for most Iranians, and to fully understand the repercussions of this aforementioned event, the story begins almost three decades prior, in 1953. This was the year that the United States overthrew the recently established democracy in Iran, led by Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. He had become very popular in the country for having the ambition to finally take advantage of the wealth that Iran needed to grow by nationalizing his country’s oil supply, which was for the previous 50 years under the control of the British Petroleum company. By proving that Mossadegh’s regime was relying on the communist party of Iran for power, and in turn not wanting to lose Iran as an ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, England was able to persuade the U.S. to assist in engineering a coup d’état against the new Iranian democracy and return Iran to its previous Pahlavi dynasty. Through what was named “Operation Ajax”, the CIA and MI6 reinstalled the Shah and instituted a pro-U.S. dictatorship of Iran that was willing to comply to Western interests in regards to the vast oil supply that the “British and American corporations had controlled the bulk of almost since their discovery” 1.
After 1953, Iran returned to its old ways, with a Shah regime that was fully backed by the powers of the U.S. and Britain and Iran’s oil was once again flowing under the control of foreign nations. Over the next 25 years, the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, ruled his autocracy with arrogance and opulence, as he received millions of dollars in foreign aid in return for 80 percent of Iran’s oil reserves going to the Americans and the British.2 Overall, the Shah
For most Americans, the story begins in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, when a group of revolutionary university students took over the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and held 52 American diplomats, intelligence officers and Marines hostage for 444 days. But for most Iranians, and to fully understand the repercussions of this aforementioned event, the story begins almost three decades prior, in 1953. This was the year that the United States overthrew the recently established democracy in Iran, led by Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. He had become very popular in the country for having the ambition to finally take advantage of the wealth that Iran needed to grow by nationalizing his country’s oil supply, which was for the previous 50 years under the control of the British Petroleum company. By proving that Mossadegh’s regime was relying on the communist party of Iran for power, and in turn not wanting to lose Iran as an ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, England was able to persuade the U.S. to assist in engineering a coup d’état against the new Iranian democracy and return Iran to its previous Pahlavi dynasty. Through what was named “Operation Ajax”, the CIA and MI6 reinstalled the Shah and instituted a pro-U.S. dictatorship of Iran that was willing to comply to Western interests in regards to the vast oil supply that the “British and American corporations had controlled the bulk of almost since their discovery” 1.
After 1953, Iran returned to its old ways, with a Shah regime that was fully backed by the powers of the U.S. and Britain and Iran’s oil was once again flowing under the control of foreign nations. Over the next 25 years, the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, ruled his autocracy with arrogance and opulence, as he received millions of dollars in foreign aid in return for 80 percent of Iran’s oil reserves going to the Americans and the British.2 Overall, the Shah