Iranian Students Storm US Embassy, Taking 52 Americans Hostage

Radical Iranian students seize the US Embassy in Tehran and hold 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, triggering a rupture in diplomatic relations that has never healed.

On November 4, 1979, approximately 3,000 Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. Their demand: the extradition of the Shah, who had been admitted to the US for cancer treatment, to face trial in Iran. The Carter administration severed diplomatic ties and imposed sanctions. The hostage crisis lasted 444 days, dominating American news and politics. A badly botched rescue mission — Operation Eagle Claw — in April 1980 killed eight US servicemembers when a helicopter and transport plane collided in the Iranian desert. The hostages were finally released on January 20, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, in what many interpreted as a final insult to Carter. The crisis fundamentally defined American public perception of Iran for generations.