Jimmy Carter and the Iranian Hostage Crisis Essays

There have been many different themes with many different topics for National History Day. The theme for this year’s National History Day is Leadership and Legacy in History. My topic is Jimmy Carter and the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

The Hostage Crisis in the late 1970s was considered one of Carter’s biggest failures. More than 60 members of the United States Embassy were taken hostage in Tehran. Their capturers were mere Iranian Students who were able to keep them captive for 444 days ("Jimmy Carter", 2016). This event portrayed President Carter as inept (“Jimmy Carter”, 2009). He did not negotiate their release and the rescue attempt the government tried failed. A group of student had held American citizens for over a year and nothing much was done about it. This was one of the most undermining events of Carter’s Presidential career and an embarrassment to America (Fink, 2002). Carter’s private negotiations with Panama about the canal led to more mistrust of the American citizens. They thought he was going to simply give it away without thinking about the consequences for America. Once again he lost more respect and distrust from his country (“Jimmy Carter”,

Furthermore, the Shah purchased billions of dollars worth of weapons of security from the US. In 1979 the realm was overthrown by extreme Islam’s that were followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. The intention of the Iranian students was to display their displeasure against the Shah. Their demand was the return of the Shah for a trial followed by his death. In addition, they asked that the US stay out of their country’s affairs. Carter’s approach required the safeguarding of American hostages but also guaranteed an alliance with Iran. Carter’s tactics on the situation had devastating effects on his run for re-election (Hamilton, 1982).

After the successful overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh, the Shah was back in control of Iran and was supported by the United States, even though he was extremely brutal to his citizens. The Shah used United States military trained Iranian police force, called SAVAK, to carry out his orders. This caused a strong dislike for the Shah by the citizens of Iran and a strong Islamic uprising. This uprising ended with the Shah being exiled from his country and the radical Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini gaining power over

The president blamed lack of military strength for the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet Union 's increasing ties with

The complexity of America’s relationship with Iran increased steadily beginning in 1908, when Iran struck oil. The Shah, the king or emperor of Iran, after taking the place of his young predecessor Reza Shah Pahlavi with the help of the CIA, led Iran into a period of extreme wealth and prosperity, the likes of which the Iranian people had never experienced. However, with the growth of wealth in Iran came the growth of Iranian resentment towards the West, specifically the United States. The Iranian’s resented the uneven distribution of wealth that they felt existed and the United State’s influence in “westernizing” their society. In 1963, this growing hatred led to a conflict with the Islamic clergy. The conflict was quickly settled by the Shah, but he was unaware that this dispute was the beginning

The people of Iran became angry that the United States would allow the Shah to seek medical treatment in the US, and overtook the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Many of them feared that the United States planned to return to Iran and reinstate Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as their leader, because of the close diplomatic ties that had been established with him. The United States had helped him to overthrow Iran’s Prime Minister during a power struggle in 1953 and modernize Iran (“The Hostage Crisis in Iran”). The Iranian protesters- many of whom were college students- took hostages, 66 of the hostages holding American citizenship, and refused to release them until the Unites States stopped helping the Shah and turned him over to them. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini decided to support the actions of the student protesters, and dissolved treaties that had been made with the Soviet Union and the United States, preventing international intervention towards the violent protests in Iran. Premier Mehdi Bazargan and most of the

Carter’s biggest failure was indeed the Iranian Hostage Crisis that lasted up until the preceding president’s first day in office. In November 1979, Islamic militants who were supporters of the Ayatollah took-over the American Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans

During the election of 1980 most Americans eyes were fixed on two presidents. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Most Americans hearts were fixed on one issue. The Iranian hostage crisis. Jimmy Carter, the current president, had tried without success to end the crisis diplomatically. Ronald Reagan, an actor turned politician, had very little experience in a political position. Carter was not fit to handle the current crisis. His attempts to free the hostages had gone poorly both diplomatically and through use of force. Ronald Reagan was not very well known as a politician, he was known as an actor and many people believed that he would just act in office instead of being the

The American government is known to promote democratic values throughout the world. Though the ideals America was fighting for during the Cold War, the government still managed to participate in the overthrow of democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh threatened to nationalize Iran’s oil in 1951 and later gained the support of the Iranian government. The British companies had many investments in Iranian oil. It is with the approval of nationalization that the economies of both British and Iran were ultimately harmed. The British government requested the help of the US so that they could perform a coup to overthrow Mossadegh. With suspicions of Mossadegh supporting communism, and being supported by the Tudeh Party, the United States government was willing to sacrifice their democratic ideologies and credibility in the region for the insurance of an anti-communist leader. This would prove to cause problems that still resonate in today’s political and military negotiations in this region.

The debate on whether or not President Carter took the appropriate action when handling the Iran hostage crisis has strong points for each side. Some debate the President did not do enough to ensure the safety of the hostage, during the situation. But at the same time, if he made even one wrong move the lives of those people could have been taken. With that though, his attempt to rescue the hostages was an obvious fail. However, it did show the he was making an effort. Where the debate lays, is if he could have done more, tried harder. Personally, I think there were more thing he could have tried. If our military showed them that we were willing to take drastic action it could have push them, out of fear, to free the hostages. Considering they

The Middle East was one of the main areas of the world which the US aimed to prevent a Communist reign. After Iran broke off from Great Britain in 1952, America disband aid to the Iranian economy and “left a running wound that bled for twenty-five years and contaminated relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Richman, Sheldon L. 5). It wasn’t until the mid 1970’s that the US began a CIA operation to create chaos in Iran to overthrow and capture Mossadegh, a man with Communist ideals, while simultaneously reinstating the previous Shah, therefore providing oil to America and Britain. America continued to aid the Shah and his corrupt government for the following years, creating a difficult environment for the people of Iran. This corruption and negative impacts on Iranian civilians lead to an internal revolution in the late 1979 that ended with the death of the Shah. Iranians then held American hostages at the US Embassy in Iran, which is the inspiration for the movie Argo (Richman, Sheldon L.

It is however limited in that it is translated from Turkish and has a number of phrases that require personal interpretation and therefore need to be assessed by other sources. The piece goes over the conflict between the current Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and the leader of the revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It also discusses how Ayatollah Khomeini’s followers actually opposed each other, but opposed the Shah more. It also explains how the Shah’s progressive attitude offended some for being too progressive, and some for not being progressive enough. This resulted in another conflict upon the abdication of the Shah, as to what the republic of Iran should be. In the end, Ayatolla Khomeini was declared Supreme Leader for life.

The Iranians were over-joyed and took over all police stations and the government. There were huge crowds swarming the city streets of Iran. Crowds took down any signs of publicity for their Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Cars were honking, people were screaming and cheering and were overwhelmed with joy. We had our way, we got it, and we had our new leader Ayatollah Khomeini. When we found out that Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was in the United States and was given

On assuming office in 1977, President Carter inherited an economy that was slowly emerging from a recession. He had severely criticized former President Ford for his failures to control inflation and relieve unemployment, but after four years of the Carter presidency, both inflation and unemployment were considerably worse than at the time of his inauguration. The annual inflation rate rose from 4.8% in 1976 to 6.8% in 1977, 9% in 1978, 11% in 1979, and hovered around 12% at the time of the 1980 election campaign. Although Carter had pledged to eliminate federal deficits, the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion. With approximately 8 million people out of work, the unemployment rate