Iran Hostage Crisis
Iran Hostage Crisis Summarize ½ pages Background In subsequent decades, this foreign intervention—along with issues like unequal development, political repression, corruption, pro-Israeli policies, and the un-Islamic opulent Western lifestyle of the Iranian elite—united radical Islamists and leftists, spurring the overthrow of the Shah's regime in the Iranian revolution. The Shah was exiled in January 1979. Following the Shah's overthrow, the U.S. attempted to mitigate the damage by finding a new relationship with the de facto Iranian government, but on October 22, 1979, the Shah, ailing from cancer, was admitted to the U.S. for medical treatment. This caused widespread anger in Iran. Furious at what he called "evidence of American plotting," revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini intensified rhetoric against "Great Satan," i.e. the United States. Events Muslim student followers of the Imam's line burn the American flag on the wall of the American Embassy in Tehran, shortly after seizing the compound.PlanningThe original idea to seize the American embassy was contrived by Ebrahim Asgharzadeh in September of 1979. The heads of the Islamic associations of the main universities of Tehran, including University of Tehran, Sharif University of Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology (polytechnic of Tehran), and the Iran University of Science and Technology, gathered. The students have denied that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was involved.[ They wanted to inform him of their plan through Ayatollah Musavi Khoeyniha, but Musavi Khoeyniha couldn't inform him before the hostages were taken, so he only became aware of the action when hostages were taken. Later, Ruhollah Khomeini supported the seizure and called it, "The second revolution: The take-over of the American spy den in Tehran." Public opinion in Iran following the admission of the Shah to the United States on November 1, 1979, Iran's new Supreme Leader, the Islamic radical Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged his people to demonstrate against United States and Israeli interests.
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