1979 - 2005

To the surprise of the U.S. government, the Iranian had successful overthrown the Shah as Ayatollah Khomeini  came to power as Iran's supreme leader. However, the Iranian would again shock the U.S. along with the rest of the world through the "Iranian Hostage Crisis." After the U.S. government took in the Shah for cancer treatment, Iranians demanded he return as they feared another U.S. engineered coup would again disrupt their lives and newly established Islamic government. Iranian students suspicious of the Shah in the U.S. began planning to storm the U.S. Embassy. On November 4, 1979, demonstrators stormed the compound and took 52 hostages from the Embassy demanding the Shah be returned, and his assets frozen. The Iranian government and Ayatollah Khomeini both publicly supported the taking of American hostages despite the international community's reaction to what they saw as the violation of international diplomatic relations.

Gunmen guard U.S. envoy Willian Sullivan
Published in Newsweek, February 26, 1979

In President Carter's speech in response to the hostage crisis, he accuses and condemns the Iranian government for supporting "mob violence and terrorism." In this televised response, Carter also calls Iran out for "sustained abuse of innocent people" and the "horrible and degrading imposed on these hostages." Despite Carter's perception of poor treatment of the hostages, Khomeini defended the Iranian government's treatment of the hostages arguing for the nobility of the Islamic character. Hostages not part of the 52 were released a few weeks after the take over, some because of health. However this release revealed the Iranian government did not want to harm any of the hostages, as having their demands met by the United States was their primary goal.





The hostage crisis continued to garner media attention from the U.S. However, much of the media coverage in Iran revolved around America. As information regarding the U.S. role in the coup had not been publicly released, the media focused on the American hostages rather than Iran or the complicated relationship between U.S. and Iran. Whereas the intensive media coverage at the time did not reveal aspects of America's past which had contributed to this situation, the media did play a large role in portraying America's failures through the 444 days it took to release all the hostages. Daily reports on national television from Walter Cronkite served as a reminder of this:

Comments from Walter Cronkite, an anchorman for CBS News

The continued coverage over the stretched out hostage crisis slowly burdened President Carter and his administration. Media had spread the image of failure of the Carter administration to rescue the hostages. Eventually, public pressure and media coverage pressured Carter to order a rescue mission, a mission that failed, instead of sticking to "the white house approach." While President Carter had remained a "popular" president to the end of his term, he had lost general approval because of the media coverage on the long hostage crisis. With a lower general approval, Carter lost in his reelection to  Reagan in 1981.

In the aftermath of the hostage crisis, Americans were out of Iran and thus media coverage subsided as Iran went through further internal and international conflict, such as war with Iraq. On September 22, 1980, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, beginning an eight year war. Hussein wanted to regain territories as Iran was still disordered from the revolution. Iran managed to eventually drive Iraqi forces back despite a well equipped Iraqi army. With the war over, Iranian leaders focused on rebuilding the economy. Although there was less tension between the U.S. and Iran than during the hostage crisis, the two countries continued to run into conflict here and there. In 1995, the U.S. began oil and trade sanctions on Iran, suspicious of Iran's connections to terrorism. Although Iran denied claims that Iran was seeking nuclear arms, the U.S. maintained their sanctions on Iran. During Mohammad Khatami's term as president of Iran, Al Qaeda attacked the United States. A few months later in 2002, President George W. Bush described Iran along with Iraq and North Korea as an "Axis of Evil" for their pursuit of long-ranged missiles. All political parties in Iran took offense and Iranians everywhere were angered.
However, in September 2002, the first nuclear reactor was built in Iran, even though the U.S. still held large disapproval. The U.N. eventually pressures Iran to halt their nuclear program for inspection. Upon inspecting Iran's uranium enrichment program in 2003, the U.N. found no traces of a nuclear weapons program.