Guests of the Ayatollah

On November 4, 1979, several hundred Iranian university students stormed the United States embassy in Tehran, seizing 66 American diplomats, marines, and civilian workers. What the students planned as a three-day sit-in became a 444-day international crisis. Mark Bowden reconstructs the ordeal from multiple perspectives, including his own reporting trips to Tehran in 2003 and 2004.

The plan originated with Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, an engineering student, and fellow activists Mohsen Mirdamadi and Habibullah Bitaraf. They called themselves Muslim Students Following the Imam's Line, signaling allegiance to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of postrevolutionary Iran. Their stated aims were to denounce America's 1953 CIA-engineered overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq and to protest President Jimmy Carter's decision to admit the exiled shah to the United States for medical treatment. A radical young cleric named Mousavi Khoeniha endorsed the plan but declined to seek Khomeini's advance approval, calculating that the imam would not oppose a popular fait accompli.

The embassy staff, reduced from nearly 1,000 to just over 60, held its regular morning meeting largely unconcerned about the protests outside. Chargé d'affaires Bruce Laingen, the top American official, projected confidence. He and his deputy, Vic Tomseth, left for the Foreign Ministry shortly before the assault, leaving First Political Secretary Ann Swift in charge.

The students overwhelmed the compound within hours. Women carrying bolt cutters under their robes severed chains on the main gate, and demonstrators flooded in. Security chief Al Golacinski activated emergency protocols, then went outside alone to negotiate, only to be seized, blindfolded, and used as leverage to demand the others surrender. John Limbert, a political officer fluent in Farsi, stepped through the chancery's steel door and delivered a stern lecture that momentarily stunned the crowd but failed to dislodge them. With no rescue forthcoming from the provisional government, Swift received authorization from Laingen to surrender. Twelve Americans locked themselves in the communications vault to destroy classified documents before eventually opening the door. Five consulate staffers slipped out a side door and reached the Canadian embassy, where they hid for months before being smuggled out of Iran.

Khomeini's response proved decisive. He initially ordered the students expelled, but his son Ahmad visited the embassy, was swept up in the jubilant crowd, and returned with a glowing report. Recognizing the action's popularity, Khomeini reversed himself, calling the takeover "a second revolution, more glorious than the first." Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and his cabinet resigned. The students' gambit empowered religious conservatives and effectively defeated the secular democratic faction that had hoped for a Western-style government.

Carter scrambled to respond. He dispatched former attorney general Ramsey Clark as an emissary, but Iran refused him entry. The students threatened to execute hostages if America attempted a rescue, leaving Carter without a military option or a negotiating partner. He froze Iranian assets, suspended oil imports, and began deportation proceedings against Iranians in the U.S. illegally, but the standoff held. At Fort Bragg, Colonel Charlie Beckwith, commander of Delta Force, the U.S. military's newly certified counterterrorism unit, began planning a rescue mission.

The crisis became a media phenomenon. The three major television networks aired extended coverage and prime-time specials, creating political pressure on the White House while amplifying the hostage takers' message. In late November, Khomeini ordered the release of 13 African-American and female hostages as a gesture to "oppressed" minorities.

Inside the compound, the hostages settled into grim routines. Most male captives were moved to a windowless basement called the Mushroom Inn, assigned thin mattresses, and forbidden to speak. CIA officer Bill Daugherty endured repeated interrogations; when confronted with a cable identifying him as CIA, he simply admitted it. Political officer Michael Metrinko, placed in solitary confinement for five months, refused to accept anything from his captors, doing hundreds of sit-ups daily and mentally renovating his family's Pennsylvania home room by room. On February 5, guards subjected the hostages to a terrifying mock execution, forcing them to strip, stand against walls, and listen as weapons were cocked behind them before the rounds were ejected.

Through the winter and spring of 1980, Carter pursued secret diplomatic channels. His chief of staff Hamilton Jordan met clandestinely with intermediaries linked to Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, eventually meeting Ghotbzadeh himself in Paris while wearing a disguise of wig, false mustache, and glasses. They crafted a plan centering on a UN commission to investigate the shah's crimes, after which the hostages would be released. Each time an agreement neared, Khomeini undercut it, siding with the students and declaring that the hostages' fate would be decided by the Majlis, Iran's yet-unelected parliament.

With diplomacy exhausted, Carter authorized a rescue mission. Delta Force had trained for months, rehearsing an elaborate two-night operation. On April 24, six C-130 transports carrying 132 operators flew to a remote desert site in Iran called Desert One, where eight helicopters from the aircraft carrier Nimitz were to meet them. The helicopters encountered massive suspended dust clouds called haboobs that scattered the formation. One turned back with a cracked rotor blade, and another retreated after its crew lost all visual references. A third developed a hydraulic failure after landing, reducing the count to five, one below the mission's minimum. Beckwith aborted. During withdrawal, a repositioning helicopter drifted into a parked C-130; both erupted in flames. Eight servicemen perished, and classified documents left in abandoned helicopters eliminated any chance of a second attempt.

The failed rescue scattered the hostages across Iran as captors dispersed them to prisons and safe houses. Vice consul Richard Queen, whose neurological symptoms had worsened for months, was released in July after becoming too ill to stand. The shah died in Cairo that same month, removing the stated pretext for holding the hostages, but the standoff continued.

Iraq's invasion of Iran on September 22 derailed a promising diplomatic channel. Sadegh Tabatabai, a Western-educated brother-in-law of Khomeini's son Ahmad, had secretly met with Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Germany and hammered out terms for release. The war froze the process. When talks resumed, the pressures of conflict and Ronald Reagan's landslide victory over Carter in November created new urgency. The students rejoiced at Carter's defeat, convinced their actions had brought down the American president.

Final negotiations proceeded through Algerian intermediaries. The agreement called for the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, promise noninterference in Iranian affairs, freeze the shah's remaining assets, and block legal claims against Iran. Carter stayed up all night in a stripped Oval Office on January 19, waiting for confirmation.

On the evening of January 20, 1981, as Reagan was inaugurated, the 52 remaining hostages were loaded onto buses and driven through a jeering gauntlet at Tehran's airport. Real celebration erupted only when the pilot announced they had left Iranian airspace. Carter, arriving in Plains, Georgia, told a rain-soaked crowd that "the aircraft carrying the fifty-two American hostages has cleared Iranian airspace," his voice breaking. He slipped his arm around his wife's waist, and they began to dance.

In an epilogue, Bowden traces the divergent fates of the participants. Many hostage takers rose to high positions in Iran's government, yet the episode carries political liabilities: When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005, he denied direct involvement in the seizure. Asgharzadeh, the takeover's author, told Bowden he would not repeat the action and has since been banned from public office for advocating democratic reforms. The former hostages received a complicated homecoming of parades and lasting psychological effects. On Bowden's final day in Tehran, three young Revolutionary Guards chased him into the street to apologize for their country's rudeness and declare their love for America.