What is Iran’s Islamic Revolution?

Islamic Revolution

On April 1, 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran was established. The United States believed in the secret agreement reached with Khomeini in Paris and still harbored illusions about the Islamic regime. It even attempted to use Khomeini's power to jointly deal with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The United States and Iran maintained normal diplomatic relations. U.S. Ambassador Sullivan Stay in Tehran.

In October 1979, the situation took a turn for the worse. The deposed King Pahlavi left Iran and traveled to Morocco, Mexico and the Bahamas. Due to the strong pressure from the Islamic regime of Iran and the threat of a fatwa, almost no country in the world is willing to accept him to settle. During this period, Pahlavi suffered from lymphoma, and his family applied to the U.S. government for treatment through Rockefeller, Kissinger and others. After much hesitation, the Carter administration announced on October 2, 1979 that it had agreed to allow Pahlavi to travel to the United States for medical treatment on "humanitarian grounds", which aroused the anger of the Iranian public. The Islamic regime in Iran suspected that the United States had reneged on the treaty and instead supported Pahlavi's return. On October 29, Khomeini declared in a speech in Qom that "American rule in Iran is the source of all our misfortunes", condemned the U.S. government for supporting Pahlavi, and said that the Iranian people would fight back. There is a wave of anti-American sentiment in Iran. Prime Minister Bazargan of Iran's interim government, who was negotiating with Algeria to normalize relations with U.S. representatives, was ousted after returning home.

On the morning of November 4, 1979, in Tehran, the capital of Iran, hundreds of Iranian male and female students occupied the U.S. Embassy, ??held 66 embassy personnel hostage, and demanded the U.S. government to extradite Pahlavi immediately. The U.S. government categorically rejects Iran's request. Iran has stated that it will not release the hostages unless Pahlavi is extradited.

On November 4, I happened to accompany Lin Zhaonan, charge d’affaires ad hoc, to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We didn’t know that the US Embassy was occupied at the time, but when we arrived at the gate of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we saw the US charge d’affaires. The special car is parked there. Later, I found out that the US charge d'affaires led two attachés to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to protest against the occupation of the US Embassy in Iran by Iranian students. They did not expect that after they protested, officials from the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs told them that they were not allowed to leave Iran. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this way, 52 hostages of the US Embassy were detained in the embassy, ??and the US charge d'affaires and two attachés were detained in a room in the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and stayed there for 444 days.

After the incident, the United States actively launched diplomatic activities in the hope that the hostages would be released. On November 18 and 19, Iran released 13 women and black hostages, while the remaining 53 hostages were still detained in the US Embassy. Iran insists on Pahlavi's extradition as a condition for the release of the hostages. Seeing that diplomatic mediation efforts were ineffective, the Carter administration in the United States took tough measures and expelled 183 Iranian diplomats and Iranian students who did not meet the requirements for residence in the United States. Iran immediately retaliated, announcing that it would stop exporting oil to the United States, prepare to withdraw its deposits in the United States, would not accept U.S. dollars as the payment currency for oil transactions, and would not repay the debt owed by the Pahlavi regime. The United States responded tit-for-tat and took countermeasures, ordering to stop importing Iranian oil, freezing Iran's assets in the United States, and appealing to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

This hostage incident has attracted great attention from the international community. Many countries expressed in different ways that they hope to respect the immunity of diplomats in accordance with the norms of international law, release hostages, and peacefully resolve disputes between the United States and Iran. On December 1, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling on Iran to release U.S. diplomats. Iran refuses to accept Security Council resolutions. The hostage issue has not yet been resolved, and the United States is determined to take tougher measures. On April 7, 1980, the U.S. government announced that it would sever diplomatic relations with Iran and formally impose economic sanctions on Iran. The United States also requires Western European countries to take similar measures.

On April 22, President Carter ordered the implementation of the "Blue Light" plan to secretly rescue hostages. As a result, the aircraft was destroyed and people were killed, and the United States lost face in front of the world.

The Iran-Iraq war broke out in September of that year, and the American hostages became a burden to Iran.

On November 2, after intense debate, the Iranian parliament passed four conditions for the release of the hostages: the United States made a guarantee not to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs, lifted the freeze on Iran’s assets in the United States, revoked all U.S. demands and sanctions on Iran, and Shah Pahlavi's properties returned to Iran. On November 11, the United States stated that it accepted the above conditions in principle as the basis for resolving the hostage issue. After mediation by Algeria and other countries, the United States and Iran finally signed an agreement to resolve the hostage issue in Algiers on January 19, 1981: the United States returned Iran's assets of 14 billion U.S. dollars in three installments and lifted economic sanctions on Iran; Iran released All American hostages. The next day, all American hostages held for 14 and a half months were released and left Iran.

Although the protracted U.S. hostage issue has been resolved, it has created a knot that is difficult to untie for future U.S.-Iran relations. In the eyes of Americans, the hostage incident is the greatest humiliation suffered by Americans since the Vietnam War. The United States, a superpower, is helpless in the face of Iran. Photos and images of an American diplomat being blindfolded and having his hands tied behind his back and being humiliated by Iranian students were repeatedly published and broadcast in the American media. After the Iranians entered the U.S. Embassy, ??they took out all the secret documents inside and showed them to the public, which greatly stimulated the American public. . In February 1980, when the 52 hostages were released and returned to the United States, people across the United States hung yellow ribbons on trees and at their doorsteps, which shows the great impact of this incident in the United States. This incident also became a point of hatred for Iran among the American public. Since then, no matter how hostile the policies adopted by successive U.S. governments to Iran, there has been no resistance in the U.S. Congress and the American public has accepted it.

The hostage incident and the new regime's blatant propaganda of "exporting revolution" greatly damaged the image of Iran's Islamic Revolution. Therefore, in the Iran-Iraq War that broke out in the future, although Iran was the invaded party, the world's No country condemned Saddam, and no country sympathized with Iran.