1979 hostage crisis: Iran’s long history of antagonism

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Updated 04 November 2018
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1979 hostage crisis: Iran’s long history of antagonism

  • Looking back: on this day 39 years ago, Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took more than 60 Americans hostage
  • The date coincides with the same day the US set for a second set of sanctions to be reinstated on Iran after Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal

DUBAI: When a group of Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran 39 years ago this Sunday, taking more than 60 Americans hostage, it marked the start of a long and precipitous decline in relations between then two countries.
Now, almost four decades later, the anniversary of the embassy takeover coincides with a fresh round of economic sanctions to be imposed on the Islamic republic. The sanctions follow the US withdrawal from the 2015 international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, and will hit Iran’s shipping, finance and energy sectors.
In 1979, the American hostages were seized by Iranian students demanding the extradition of Iran’s ruler, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was in the US receiving treatment for cancer (he had fled from Iran to Egypt in January). The issue escalated rapidly after the storming of the embassy. The following day Iran ended military treaties with the US and the Soviet Union, which allowed for military intervention. Then, on Nov. 6, Ayatollah Khomeini took power.
“The hostage crisis was the first time the American public acquired a negative view of Iran,” Mark Katz, professor of government and politics at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said this week.
“Of course, many Iranians had long had a negative view of the US, stemming from the 1953 Mossadegh episode (the overthrow of Iran’s prime minister) and the subsequent US support for the shah. I well remember how Iranian students frequently demonstrated against the shah’s regime and US support for it during the 1970s.”
Matters worsened when US president Jimmy Carter sent former attorney general Ramsey Clark and Senate Intelligence Committee staff director William Miller to Iran on Nov. 7 to negotiate the release of the hostages, and Khomeini refused to meet with them. One week later, Iranian assets in US banks were frozen — the first of many restrictions on the Islamic republic.
“The hostage crisis had a profound effect on American views of Iran,” Katz said. “Before the Iranian revolution, Iran was seen as an ally; afterwards it was seen as unremittingly hostile and even irrational. This was partly because most Americans had no notion of Iranian grievances against the US.”
On Nov. 19 and 20, women and African-American hostages were freed, leaving 53 Americans captive in the embassy. Although the United Nations had passed a resolution in early December 1979 calling for Iran to release the hostages, President Carter cut diplomatic ties with Iran in April 1980, imposing more sanctions and ordering all Iranian diplomats to leave the US.
“The hostage-taking marked the moment American-Iranian relations began deteriorating,” said Riad Kahwaji, founder and CEO of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. “But relations were not always the way they are today. When the shah was in power, relations were extremely good between both countries — Iran was more or less Washington’s main strategic ally in the region.”
Kahwaji said Iran had a status that was equivalent, if not higher, than Israel with respect to the US. “The weapons given to the shah were even more advanced than those given to Israel,” he said. “So it was a high-level strategic relationship. At that time, Iran was openly and publicly, with US knowledge and indirect support, starting its own nuclear program as well.”
The hostage-taking came as a major shock. “The revolution was a blunder on the part of American intelligence, which didn’t expect it to happen,” Kahwaji said. “So the revolution and the subsequent hostage-taking was a major setback in relations between the two countries.”
On Jan. 20, 1981, 444 days after the storming of the embassy, the US hostages were released and flown to Wiesbaden air base in Germany. The release was negotiated after the US and Iran signed an agreement to free Iranian assets.
Today, as Iran prepares to face a new set of sanctions imposed by the US, experts look back on the events of 1979 as among the most significant and far-reaching in the region.
“Iran was the number one ally to Israel in the region and it became the number one enemy,” Kahwaji said. “So, with the revolution, Iran shifted 180 degrees and all of its previous allies became its main enemies, and vice versa.”
New alliances emerged in the region. “Subsequently, with the Iran-Iraq war, we had Iran on the side of everything that opposed the US and the West, and it still is today,” he said. “The whole political landscape in the Middle East changed.”
On Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the new sanctions would deprive Iran of the revenues “that it uses to spread death and destruction around the world. Our ultimate aim is to compel Iran to permanently abandon its well-documented outlaw activities and behave as a normal country.”
He said the sanctions were a part of a US government effort to change the behavior of the Iranian regime.
“On Nov. 5, the US will reimpose sanctions that were lifted as part of the nuclear deal on Iran’s energy, ship-building, shipping and banking sectors,” he said.
“These sanctions hit at the core areas of Iran’s economy. They are necessary to spur changes we seek on the part of the regime and our actions today are targeted at the regime, not the people of Iran, who have suffered grievously under it.”


US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says 5 members killed in Hamas attack

Updated 12 June 2025
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US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says 5 members killed in Hamas attack

  • “We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms,” the group said in its statement

WASHINGTON: The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Wednesday accused militant group Hamas of attacking a bus carrying its staffers to an aid distribution center, saying at least five people were killed and multiple others injured.
The group said in a statement that around 10 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) “a bus carrying more than two dozen members of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation team... were brutally attacked by Hamas.”
“We are still gathering facts, but what we know is devastating: there are at least five fatalities, multiple injuries, and fear that some of our team members may have been taken hostage,” the statement read.
In an email to AFP the group said all the passengers on the bus were Palestinian and all were aid workers. They were en route to GHF’s distribution center in the area west of Khan Younis.
“We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms,” the group said in its statement. “These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons and friends, who were risking their lives every day to help others.”
An officially private effort with opaque funding and backed by Israel, GHF began operations on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into Gaza for more than two months, sparking warnings of mass famine.
But GHF’s first week of operations, in which it said it had distributed more than seven million meals’ worth of food, has been marred by criticism.
The Israeli military faces allegations of shooting into crowds of civilians rushing to pick up aid packages near GHF sites.
Israeli authorities and the GHF — which uses contracted US security — denied any such incident took place.
The United Nations and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the foundation over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.


Palestinian boy who lost nine siblings arrives in Italy for treatment

Updated 12 June 2025
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Palestinian boy who lost nine siblings arrives in Italy for treatment

  • According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) website, more than 15,000 children have reportedly been killed and over 34,000 injured in almost two years of war in Gaza

MILAN: A group of 17 Palestinian children, including an 11-year-old boy who lost nine siblings in an Israel strike in Gaza last month, arrived in Italy on Wednesday for hospital treatment, accompanied by more than 50 family members.
Adam Al-Najjar, who has multiple fractures, arrived with his mother at Milan’s Linate airport where he was welcomed by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, before being transferred to the city’s Niguarda Hospital.
The plane that landed at Linate carried five other injured Palestinian minors, while 11 more arrived on flights to other Italian airports.
The May 23 attack left Adam in a serious condition at Nasser Hospital, one of the few operational medical facilities in southern Gaza.
Adam “is stable, has a head wound that is healing but his left arm is bad, the bones are fractured and the nerves damaged,” his 36-year-old mother, Alaa Al-Najjar, a paediatrician, told Italian newspaper la Repubblica.
Adam’s father, Hamdi Al-Najjar, who was also a doctor, died a week after the attack.
“The damage is in my left hand, there is a problem with the nerves, I can’t feel my fingers. There’s still a lot of pain,” Adam told Turkish news agency Anadolu.
A total of 70 Palestinians were set to arrive in Italy on three military aircraft that set off from Israel’s Eilat airport, the Italian foreign ministry said earlier on Wednesday.
The patients will be treated at hospitals in numerous cities including Milan, Rome, Florence and Bologna.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) website, more than 15,000 children have reportedly been killed and over 34,000 injured in almost two years of war in Gaza.
Including the latest operation, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has so far brought 150 injured Palestinians from Gaza to Italy for treatment, the foreign ministry said.
The Italian government has been a staunch supporter of Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants that killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
In recent months, Rome has criticized the extent of the Israeli response, and expressed concern as the death toll in Gaza has mounted, while declining to apply sanctions.
Italy was not among numerous European Union countries that called last month for a review of EU-Israeli economic and trade relations.

 


Israel to expel French nationals on Gaza aid boat by end of week

Updated 12 June 2025
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Israel to expel French nationals on Gaza aid boat by end of week

  • All 12 of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years
  • France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a UN meeting later this month in New York on steps toward recognizing a Palestinian state and reaching a so-called two-state solution to the conflict

JERUSALEM: Israel is to expel by the end of the week four French nationals held after security forces intercepted their Gaza-bound aid boat, France’s foreign minister said Wednesday, as an Israeli NGO said one of the French campaigners was briefly put in solitary confinement.
The announcement came as France’s prime minister accused activists aboard the boat — who hoped to raise awareness about the humanitarian situation in war-torn Gaza — of capitalizing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for political attention.
The four, who include Rima Hassan, a member of European Parliament from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party who is of Palestinian descent, will be deported on Thursday and Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X.
They were among 12 people on board the Madleen sailboat which was carrying food and supplies for Gaza before it was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters off the besieged Palestinian territory on Monday.
Four, including two French citizens and Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, agreed to be deported immediately.
The remaining eight were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily, according to Adalah, an Israeli rights NGO representing most of the activists.
All 12 of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years.
Adalah said on Wednesday that Israeli authorities had placed French MEP Hassan and Brazilian activist Thiago Avila in solitary confinement, with Hassan later removed.

“Israeli authorities transferred two of the volunteers — the Brazilian volunteer Thiago Avila and the French-Palestinian European Parliament member Rima Hassan — to separate prison facilities, away from the others, and placed them in solitary confinement,” Adalah said in a statement.
The NGO later said that Hassan had been moved back to Givon prison in Ramla, near Tel Aviv, while Avila remained in isolation.
When asked for comment, Israel’s prison authority referred AFP to the foreign ministry, which said it was checking the reports.
Adalah said Hassan was put in isolation after writing “Free Palestine” on a prison wall.
The NGO said Brazilian activist Avila was placed in isolation “due to his ongoing hunger and thirst strike, which he began two days ago.”
“He has also been treated aggressively by prison authorities, although this has not escalated to physical assault,” it added.
The leader of Hassan’s LFI party in parliament, Mathilde Panot, said France’s prime minister Francois Bayrou had failed to condemn Israel’s actions.
The party’s boss, Jean-Luc Melenchon, accused Bayrou of “abandoning the French prisoners,” and called on President Emmanuel Macron to step in.
“These activists obtained the effect they wanted, but it’s a form of instrumentalization to which we should not lend ourselves,” Bayrou responded in the National Assembly.
It’s “through diplomatic action, and efforts to bring together several states to pressure the Israeli government, that we can obtain the only possible solution” to the conflict, he added.
Foreign Minister Barrot also rejected Panot’s criticism, saying “the admirable mobilization” of French officials had made a rapid resolution of the situation possible “despite the harassment and defamation that they have been subjected to.”

France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a UN meeting later this month in New York on steps toward recognizing a Palestinian state and reaching a so-called two-state solution to the conflict.
Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, whose entire population the United Nations has warned is at risk of famine.
Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz on Wednesday called on Egypt to block a hundreds-strong pro-Palestinian activist convoy from reaching Gaza, as the group arrived in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023 attacked Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the retaliatory Israeli military offensive has killed at least 55,104 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.
Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.

 


Israel says bodies of two hostages retrieved from Gaza

Updated 11 June 2025
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Israel says bodies of two hostages retrieved from Gaza

  • Yair Yaakov was seized in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and killed the same day

JERUSALEM: Israeli forces have retrieved the bodies of two hostages from the Gaza Strip, the military said Wednesday, as Israel presses its offensive in the Palestinian territory.
A military statement said a joint operation by the army and the Shin Bet security agency recovered the bodies of Yair Yaakov and “an additional hostage whose name has not yet been cleared for publication” from the Khan Yunis area of southern Gaza.
Yaakov, a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was 59 when he was seized in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and killed the same day.
The military statement said he had been abducted and killed by fighters from Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally.
Yaakov was abducted along with his partner Meirav Tal, as they sheltered in their safe room in Nir Oz.
She was freed on November 28, 2023 during the first truce.
Abducted separately at the home of their mother, Yair’s two children Yagil and Or were also released on November 27 during the first truce.
Nir Oz was one of the communities hit hardest by the attack, with nearly a quarter of its residents killed or taken hostage.


Milei says Argentina to move Israel embassy to Jerusalem in 2026

Argentine President Javier Milei attends a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem. (Reuters)
Updated 11 June 2025
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Milei says Argentina to move Israel embassy to Jerusalem in 2026

  • “I am proud to announce before you that in 2026 we will make effective the move of our embassy to the city of west Jerusalem,” Milei told Israeli parliament Wednesday

JERUSALEM: Argentine President Javier Milei said Wednesday his country would move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the status of which is one of the most delicate issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“I am proud to announce before you that in 2026 we will make effective the move of our embassy to the city of west Jerusalem,” Milei said in a speech in the Israeli parliament during an official state visit.
Argentina’s embassy is currently located near the coastal city of Tel Aviv.
Several countries, including the United States, Paraguay, Guatemala and Kosovo, have moved their embassies to Jerusalem, breaking with international consensus.
Israel has occupied east Jerusalem since 1967, later annexing it in a move not recognized by the international community.
Israel treats the city as its capital, while Palestinians want east Jerusalem to become the capital of a future state.
Most foreign embassies to Israel are located in the coastal hub city of Tel Aviv in order to avoid interfering with negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
In 2017, during his first term as US president, Donald Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, sparking Palestinian anger and the international community’s disapproval.
The United States transferred its embassy to Jerusalem in May 2018.