Iran Hostage Crisis

Taken Hostage:

The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter with Radical Islam

OVERALL COMMENTS

I. INTRO On November 4, 1979 Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held for 444 days, sixty-six American hostages.This event would go down in history as the Iran Hostage Crisis and as America 's first encounter with militants of Radical Islam.

This event was an obvious symbol of the United States’ “inability to control its own fate, maintain its dignity, and pursue independent course.” Fueled by the social, economic, and political turmoil, Americans during this time were in a constant uproar about the Iran Hostage Crisis due to the negatively changing status of a once prosperous and undefeatable United States.

II.

This scandal served as a precursor to America 's overwhelming distrust of the government. Suspected of orchestrating a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., President Nixon’s administration attempted to cover up any signs of their involvement. This scandal led to the discovery of many abuses of power by the Nixon administration, Nixon’s impeachment, eventually Nixon’s resignation from office in August of 1974. Though there is no solid evidence to convict President Nixon of directly ordering the break in, his administration was indeed guilty of trying to cover the entire ideal by paying off witnesses. This scandal added to a growing credibility gap which began during Lyndon B. Johnson’s

Carter was elected into office when America was looking for a great change in politics but soon after instances like the hostage crisis, Americans began to realize that Carter was not the type of representative that they wanted. The Carter administration and the State Department officials thought that the problem would be over quickly and the hostages would be returned quickly, giving Carter’s image a boost. Unsurprisingly, Carter’s political needs matched poorly with those of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shah Muslim religious leader of the time. Americans pressured Carter to handle the issue in an American manner with gusto and military force as a small group of university students managed to humiliate and humble the “American tiger.” Carter’s strategy included sending a letter to Khomeini, calling for the resolvement of issues of Iran-America issues but the Carter administration quickly learned that it would take a great deal to get the Ayatollah’s attention. Overwhelmingly, the world saw Carter as “weak and ineffectual” and this majorly tainted the image of a 1970s-1980s