The Iran Hostage Crisis
A diplomatic crisis between America and Iran
What was it?
Iranians were outraged at America when they brought in the shah for medical treatment after there had been an uprising against the shah's government. In response, supporters of the Ayatollah government broke into the American Embassy in Tehran and held 66 members hostage. 52 of these hostages remained in the embassy into he summertime. None of the hostages wee being injured, but were injected with horror while being hunted and threatened by the terrorists. After awhile, Carter decided to deploy a mission to enter the embassy and release the hostages. The plan was derailed after a desert storm caused some of the planes to fail. By the 1980 election, the crisis boiled to the point where the people of America realized they were not getting anywhere with Carter. They elected Ronald Reagan, and after he gave his inaugural speech the hostages were released after 444 days.
Opinion
Carter handled the situation very poorly, which showed his lousiness in his foreign policies. In the Vietnam War, a US Embassy was penetrated by the Vietcong. After that one would have thought that we would learn from our mistakes. However, a mere 20 years later, we have gained no progress as another specialist group raided a foreign embassy. America should had seen this operation coming. Also, no American Embassy should be remotely easy to penetrate and yet our enemies have had 100 percent success in raiding these diplomatic areas. It was unfortunate to see our country struggle once more after having one of our own embassies being seized twice.
American Hostages
Visual representation of what they had to go through while Carter continued to relax.
Operation Eagle Claw
When one of the planes crashed and killed 8 people, citizens were outraged that after Carter finally tried to help the hostages he ends up killing MORE people.
Public Opinion
This picture shows how the American citizens felt about Iran and its people.