What We Knew and Didn't Know During the Iranian Hostage Crisis

On February 11, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters overthrew the Shah of Iran, marking the end of the monarchy. But when we reflect back on this disruptive event, how many of us recall that the hostage crisis didn't begin until nearly nine months later, November 4, 1979.

Initially 66 Americans were taken hostage when the U.S. embassy was stormed, but shortly after 13 were released and then another for health reasons so that a total of 52 we held captive for the 444 day ordeal.

There were actually many Americans in Iran at the time of this crisis. Many were missionaries, including a friend with whom I painted apartments in Minneapolis a couple years after. Dennis and his family sold their house in exchange for two Persian rugs and a gold belt, hurriedly leaving the country by escaping into Turkey.

Not once did I ever hear the story of how the Shah came into power 26 years earlier. Why were Americans so ignorant about this backstory? 

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It was David Halberstam's The Fifties that opened my eyes regarding the extent of U.S. meddling in foreign affairs. Though I, like many, were aware of our country's bad behavior in places like Chile, Central America and Vietnam, Halberstam gets beneath the surface to where the seeds were first planted. Iran was among the first in a series of clandestine interventions in which leaders were overthrown so that we could install our own puppets.

Here's a short list of countries we messed with in the 1950s and 60s: Egypt, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Lebanon, Iraq, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laos, Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Brazil, and Indonesia, among others. According to one source, the U.S. made 66 regime change attempts during the Cold War, succeeding in 26 of these. 75% of our successes were by means of election interference. 

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I mention all of the above in order to point out that the media failed us by not informing us of the backstory regarding how the Shah of Iran gained power in the first place. The CIA, in collaboration with British intelligence (Operation Ajax), orchestrated the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalized Iran’s oil industry. 

This preface from Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men shows how our CIA-funded & generated 1953 coup affected the people themselves. Were they happier afterwards?

One day I attended a book party for an older Iranian woman who had written her memoirs. She spoke for an hour about her eventful life. Although she never touched on politics, she mentioned in passing that her family was related to the family of Mohammad Mossadegh, who served as prime minister of Iran for twenty-six months in the early 1950s and was overthrown in a coup d'etat staged by the Central Intelligence Agency.

After she finished speaking, I couldn't resist the temptation to ask a question. "You mentioned Mossadegh," I said. "What do you remember, or what can you tell us, about the coup against him?" She immediately became agitated and animated.

"Why did you Americans do that terrible thing?" she cried out. "We always loved America. To us, America was the great country, the perfect country, the country that helped us while other coun- tries were exploiting us. But after that moment, no one in Iran ever trusted the United States again. I can tell you for sure that if you had not done that thing, you would never have had that problem of hostages being taken in your embassy in Tehran. All your trouble started in 1953. Why, why did you do it?"

This outburst reflected a great gap in knowledge and understanding.

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This week, American journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about the Biden administration's blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. The media repeated bogus claims from Washington like, "We have no idea who would do such a thing" and "Maybe the Russians did it." Reading the Hersh piece brought to mind the above memories regarding the Shah's downfall. 

As my mother frequently said, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." 

What Really Happened in Iran?

It's unfortunate how limited our knowledge of history is. In part, it's because the amount of work involved to be informed. It's impossible to have any depth of understanding by only following media sound bytes. Hence, the importance of reading, but even here you have obfuscation and disinformation taking place so as to mislead. Here's an example.

How many Americans were aware that the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was put in power by U.S. covert action in the early 50s? How many knew any history at all about the roots of the hostage crisis that took place during the Carter administration? I myself knew nothing about the reasons the Shah had to flee his country. Perhaps the media heads themselves were ignorant, except for those who played the mouthpiece for an American spin on these events.

It wasn't until I read David Haberstam's The Fifties that I learned how the Shah came to power, an early "victory" for the CIA, overthrowing a democratically elected leader whom we (the U.S.) didn't like. 

And why didn't we like him? Because he wanted to keep his country neutral during the Cold War. The U.S. wanted a leader who was pro-U.S.

Here's what Halberstam wrote about the overthrow:

[The coup had] gone so smoothly... because local conditions were favorable.  The Shah's historical legitimacy had proved far more compelling than Mossadegh's popularity, which was shaky at best. But Roosevelt [EdNote: not FDR] sensed that Dulles was not terribly interested in that part of his report.

In fact, even as Roosevelt was briefing the top national security people about Iran, planning was going ahead on the next coup--one that they hoped would topple the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. In fact, soon after Roosevelt's return, he was offered the job of running the new covert operation, which confirmed his earlier suspicions about Foster Dulles's eagerness to proceed in this sphere. The success of the coup in Iran, Roosevelt sensed, had provided an irresistible inducement for the Eisenhower administration: It had been quick, painless, and inexpensive. A potential adversary had been taken out with almost ridiculous ease. American newspapers had all carried the cover story, although the press elsewhere and the Iranian people talked openly about the CIA role.

Administration officials had few moral qualms either about their role or about deceiving the American press and people. They saw themselves in an apocalyptic struggle with Communism in which normal rules of fair play did not apply. 
--David Halberstam, The Fifties

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Earlier this spring I picked up Stephen Kinzer's book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. The frontispiece sets the tone with this quote by Harry Truman: "There is nothing new in the world except the history you didn't know."

That pretty much sums it up. 

Kinzer begins his preface with this attention-getting anecdote:

PREFACE
One day I attended a book party for an older Iranian woman who had written her memoirs. She spoke for an hour about her eventful life. Although she never touched on politics, she mentioned in passing that her family was related to the family of Mohammad Mossadegh, who served as prime minister of Iran for twenty-six months in the early 1950s and was overthrown in a coup d'etat staged by the Central Intelligence Agency.

After she finished speaking, I couldn't resist the temptation to ask a question. "You mentioned Mossadegh," I said. "What do you remember, or what can you tell us, about the coup against him?" She immediately became agitated and animated.

"Why did you Americans do that terrible thing?" she cried out. "We always loved America. To us, America was the great country, the perfect country, the country that helped us while other countries were exploiting us. But after that moment, no one in Iran ever trusted the United States again. I can tell you for sure that if you had not done that thing, you would never have had that problem of hostages being taken in your embassy in Tehran. All your trouble started in 1953. Why, why did you do it?"

This outburst reflected a great gap in knowledge and understanding...
--Stephen Kinzer

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Sadly, we have seemingly countless gaps in our knowledge and understanding, but this doesn't seem to stop us from expressing strong opinions on almost everything. Becoming aware of our limitations ought to make us exercise a little more humility before we speak, shouldn't it?