Word: shah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...difference on Nov. 4 was that Khomeini was not a potential rescuer but the spiritual force behind the attack. Two weeks earlier, disregarding State Department warnings of certain reprisal by the Iranians, President Carter had permitted the ailing Shah to enter the U.S. from his temporary hideaway in Mexico to be treated for lymphatic cancer in a New York City hospital. The Ayatullah, then 79, a Muslim mystic and fundamentalist who despised the West and held the U.S. in special hatred for its long support of the Shah, had flown into a pious rage. At his headquarters in the holy...
...building, and Marine guards there held the doors shut long enough for officials to destroy some secret embassy documents. Then they surrendered and, with the rest of the Americans, were blindfolded and bound. Their captors identified themselves as students whose allegiance was to Khomeini. Their demand was that the Shah be returned to Iran...
...began the slow and cruel exaction of vengeance. As outrage flared in the U.S., President Carter denounced the occupation as terrorism and flatly rejected extradition of the Shah. Military intervention was also ruled out because of the delicacy of Persian Gulf oil politics, Iran's geography, the awkward truth that the U.S. did not have a commanding military presence in the area and-above all-the danger to the hostages. Their captors threatened executions at once if the U.S. made any military move to liberate them. Carter had no choice but to negotiate. He tried dealing with moderate Iranian...
...streets outside the embassy, crowds massed each day to howl for the heads of Carter and the Shah. Within the compound the militants settled in for a long occupation, hectoring foreign reporters at press conferences and making a point of hauling garbage wrapped in an American flag. It seemed that they had not decided what to do with the hostages. Simply hold them? Shoot them? Or, as they threatened more often as the days went by, try them as spies...
Within a week of the embassy takeover, it was clear that the militants were acting with the approval of the stumbling revolutionary government, and President Carter began to retaliate. He stopped the delivery of $300 million in spare parts for the military arsenal bought from the U.S. by the Shah. Carter ordered the deportation of all Iranian students in the U.S. who were not complying with the terms of their visas, suspended imports of Iranian oil (4% of U.S. consumption), ordered the carrier Midway to steam from the Indian Ocean to the Arabian Sea, and froze $8 billion in Iranian...