Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture

By Massoumeh Ebtekar and Fred A. Reed

In this first-ever insider account of the American Embassy takeover in 1979, Massoumeh Ebtekar sets out to correct 20 years of misrepresentation by the Western media of what the aims of the Iranian students and the populist revolution they personified were, and have since remained.

She also explains, in considerable detail, how one faction of the Shi’a clerical establishment came to see (with the eager complicity of the international media and its own pro-Western political agenda) these students as a vanguard of its own theocratic goals, rather than of the much broader cultural upheaval which had ousted the regime of Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlevi, installed through a United States-sponsored coup in 1953.

In February 2000, a month before U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s admission of active CIA involvement in the 1953 coup, Iranians flocked to the polls to elect the Islamic Republic’s sixth parliament: To date, 70% of the candidates elected have been characterized by the Western media as moderates,” among them, like Ebtekar, the students who took over the American Embassy in 1979. These moderates, followers of President Mohammad Khatamihimself a Shi’a clergymanare now attempting to break the stranglehold the conservative religious faction have on Iranian politics since 1979, and to establish a civil society within an Islamic framework.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the rapidly proliferating international phenomenon of peoples attempting to preserve their independence and culture from the overwhelming hegemony of the United States in the community of nations, and in how the independent” American media continues to play an active role as an instrument of American foreign policy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Release date: Oct 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9780889229914

Massoumeh Ebtekar

Masoumeh Ebtekar is an Iranian scientist and politician. Ebtekar first achieved fame as the spokeswoman of the students who had occupied the US Embassy in 1979. Later she became the first female Vice President of Iran, the head of the Environment Protection Organization of Iran during the administration of President Mohammad Khatami, and is currently a city councilwoman elect of Tehran. She is a founding member of the Iranian reformist political party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front. She wrote an account of the embassy takeover with Fred A. Reed entitled Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture, which is available from Talonbooks.

Book preview

PREFACE

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

ON NOVEMBER 4TH, 1979, A GROUP of students from several Tehran universities captured the Embassy of the United States of America in Tehran. They took the diplomats and other personnel present hostage.

In their first communiqué, issued a few hours later, the students explained that they had acted to protest the protection and asylum granted by the American Government to the ousted Shah of Iran. The students considered the seizure of the embassy as their indisputable right of opposition to the American Government’s decision to welcome the shah and to its general policy of hostility towards the Iranian revolution. Their act of protest was quickly depicted by the United States Government as barbarous and deserving of punishment.

A majority of Americans displayed little if any sympathy toward the Iranian students during this incident. Most, in fact, condemned the action and supported the American government’s punitive actions against Iran. Their countrymen were being held by the students—it seemed only natural for American citizens to support their government.

But the question remains: did the American people (and global public opinion) possess the necessary information to make an informed judgment, to weigh the claims of the Iranian students and those of the American government? Had the Iranian students enjoyed equal access to dialogue with the American people, had they been able to explain the reasons for their initiative, would they have been viewed in the same way as they have been from that time down to the present day?

For decades large numbers of Iranian nationals have been engaged, throughout the United States, in production, commerce and particularly education: living, in other words, side by side with the American people. Has their behavior displayed any sign of barbarous or aggressive temperament? Is not the very fact that millions of Iranians have been living in the United States for the past two decades proof of the respect they hold and the value they attach to that country and its people? Yet a group of these selfsame Iranians, a select group of university students, captured the American Embassy and took its personnel hostage. Is it fair to view their action as a barbarous encroachment on the rights of a number of American citizens without a detailed inquiry into its logical and historical background?

If the action had been undertaken by a group of hooligans or armed robbers, it would have been easy to decry, to consider as deserving of punishment. But considering that it was the work of a group of university students, would not the same verdict be a hasty one?

If today, under present circumstances, the individuals who captured the former American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 would be asked whether they would be prepared to take similar action to secure their rights which had been violated by the United Stated Government, their response would be a definite no. Still, the circumstances prevailing in the year of the embassy takeover have to be closely examined.

The historical memory of the Iranian nation, and in particular the revolutionaries, of the United States-inspired coup of August, 1953, that resulted in the overthrow of the government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, needs an honest appraisal. That event resulted in the return of Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi to Iran and the continuation of his dictatorial regime. When all the implications of this tragic episode in our history are taken into consideration, an unbiased arbiter would surely judge the students’ action has having been the only real avenue for seeking justice from the American government.

Since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, conditions have never existed for the genuine dialogue that must be a prelude to new relations of mutual understanding between Iran and the United States. Such conditions certainly do not exist at present. The American government continues to deal with Iran from a position of power and authority, granting itself the right to interfere in the affairs of another country. For its part, Iran, given its historical memories and the past actions of the United States, has regarded the American government as an enemy. Obviously, such an atmosphere allows no possibility for dialogue, and hence little possibility of settling outstanding issues.

Twenty-one years have elapsed since the hostage taking. Over these years, the American government has worked assiduously to mask its unjust actions toward the Iranian nation. This has involved an unrelenting and unscrupulous propaganda campaign against the university students and Iran as a whole, in an effort to convince the American people that the official version of events is the only and true version. Unfortunately, they have been successful in doing so.

The time has now come for information and firm analysis to be presented to world public opinion and to Americans themselves, to enable them to make a fair and informed judgment of the embassy takeover of 1979, an event which had such a profound impact on regional political development in the Near East, as well as upon the two countries directly involved.

Then, even if with full knowledge of all the facts heretofore hidden, the action of the Iranian students is still condemned by the American people, their view, whether or not it is acceptable to unbiased observers, must be respected.

Do the American people realize that today, the leaders of the reform movement in Iran are the same individuals who captured the former United States Embassy? Have they considered that the supporters of this reform movement see it as the continuation of the revolution that toppled the imperial regime in 1979? Should the implications of this fact not lead to a change in the way these university students have been judged from 1979 through to the present?

The Islamic Revolution of Iran began as a reform movement against a non-democratic imperial regime. It became a movement against a government that strongly suppressed any freedom-seeking voice and did not refrain from liberal use of instruments such as exile, imprisonment, torture and execution in the suppression of legitimate dissent.

During all the years that the shah established and enforced his power through the torture and massacre of Iranians, whether young people, academics, clerics and all other strata of the society, the Iranian people looked on as the American government supported and protected him. Eventually, through exceptional sacrifices and the loss of thousands of martyrs, the Iranian people finally managed to force the shah to abdicate and renounce his dictatorial rule. Yet Iranians soon saw that the United States did not hesitate to continue to support the shah and offer him asylum after he had been driven from Iran.

The Iranian people’s bitter memories of the actions of the American government against the interests of their country go much farther back than the period of the Islamic movement. In 1953, our nation was both witness to and victim of the first successful Central Intelligence Agency coup d’état against a sovereign state. That event deposed the popularly elected national and democratic Iranian government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh and paved the way for the return of the shah, who had escaped abroad in fear of public anger. So it was that direct American intervention led to the re-imposition of dictatorial rule in Iran for nearly twenty-seven years.

This brief account is sorely inadequate to describe the collective memory of Iranians of the unjust actions of the United States government against them. The bitter legacy and detrimental effects of that 1953 coup are felt to this day in the heart and soul of the Iranian people.

Against the background of American government machinations in Iran, can the action of a group of Iranian students be described as genuinely despicable? They took a limited number of Americans captive for a limited period of time and finally returned them safely to their country and families. Compare that deed to all that the American government has done against the country and people of Iran during the past several decades.

The difficulty that any just arbitration of this incident encounters today is that the university students are still faced with a government that does not remotely practice what it preaches. The actions of the American government are, in fact, entirely contrary to what it claims. This, after all, is a government that prides itself as a supporter of human rights, and as a defender of such rights everywhere. The American government claims to be a supporter of democracy, and is trying to induce any government acting against democratic principles to adhere to these principles. But in practice, does it itself adhere to such principles?

There can be little doubt that the actions of the American government toward Iran during the two eras (the reign of Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi and the Islamic Republic) have produced bitter fruit. It should come as no surprise that the conclusions drawn by the Iranian people concerning the behavior of the American government toward their country and government are sharply at variance with what Washington would like. Iranians believe that they are much closer to human rights and democracy today than they were during the reign of Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi, when the shah clearly enjoyed the complete support of the American government. The Islamic Republic, from its victory and overthrow of the shah to the present day, has been subjected to the continuous animosity, disaffection and injustice of the American government.

If the American people, and public opinion in the West, had access to the information extant amidst the documents of the U.S. State Department and CIA in connection with the actions of that government toward Iran, without doubt their judgment of the hostage crisis would change drastically. Although Americans would surely never come to terms with the capture of their countrymen by the university students, they would nevertheless judge the students’ action in a more fair and more equitable manner.

The book you are about to read is a factual report of those events from the moment of entry of the university students into the former United States Embassy in Tehran to the conclusion of the hostage crisis. In it, Ms. Massoumeh Ebtekar, who was present from beginning to end, strives to inform people around the world, and in particular in the United States and Canada, of all that was said and done during those 444 days, with sincerity and accuracy.

Although her endeavor is a modest one in comparison with the deluge of negative propaganda throughout the world against the Iranian university students and Islamic Iran in general, it is a remarkably substantive account of a hitherto untold story; a story that is still unfolding in ways no one can foresee. Hopefully, this small volume will serve to broaden already open minds (and perhaps even open the eyes of a new generation) of Americans, Westerners, and whoever else might read it, as to what actually took place here twenty-one years ago.

The present work may well help pave the way for dialogue between the two countries. It may well be that the two present antagonists will gain access to new facts that will grant them greater understanding of the realities of yesterday and today. The high wall of mistrust between them could fall.

No one can overlook the pivotal position of Iran in this, the most sensitive region of the world, just as no one can ignore the role of the United States in global affairs. If the two sides can embark upon a genuine joint effort to create a future of peace and sincerity, they can play a remarkable role in the family of nations. May it be so.

Seyyed Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha

Tehran, August, 2000

INTRODUCTION

MORE THAN 20 YEARS HAVE PASSED since Iranian students captured the United States Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. At last the time has come to tell the inside story, to relate what really happened during those tumultuous days.

More than a decade was to pass before I could come to grips with the full impact of what we had done. As I looked back, it became clear that time was needed to size up the events that I had experienced first hand, and to put them in perspective. Then too, the political situation in Iran gave me cause for hesitation. It was impossible to forget that our country, for the first eight years of its newly liberated existence, had been locked in deadly combat with the Iraqi forces that invaded shortly after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution. When that war came to an inconclusive end, and Iran embarked on an ambitious reconstruction program, other priorities called.

On a purely personal level, I had married, given birth to two children, begun an academic career, and become the publisher of a journal dealing with women’s studies from an Islamic perspective. The capture of the embassy was behind us. True, it had become a cause for public and political commemoration in Iran, and a source of continuing bitterness between our country and the United States. But it belonged to the past, or so I felt. My own life was busy, challenging, full of the problems any working mother faces, and complicated by the constraints of a traditional society such as ours intent on making its own way in the modern world.

As a professional woman, I had experienced a degree of success. But for all the sense of accomplishment, I still had a feeling of dissatisfaction. It was unfocused at first, vague. In my few idle moments, the voices and the faces I had come to know during those 444 days would suddenly surge up into my consciousness, as vivid and alive as they had been so many years before. Perhaps, too, my recollection of these faces and voices was a response to the reawakening, in our own society, to the call for democratization, and to the need for constructive dialogue about the past; and of a realization that, as Iran had changed, the slogans that carried us forward as revolutionary students in 1980 might no longer hold all the answers to the problems of today.

As you, the reader, might expect, telling the tale as we, the students, experienced it has been a story in its own right.

The process that eventually led to this book began in 1992, well before I became involved in any serious political activity. My account, as I imagined it then, would be that of an ordinary Iranian citizen who had been catapulted, as a student, into the midst of extraordinary events. Whatever story I told, I believed, would be not only an account of those events as I experienced them, but an effort to understand them, to put them in the wider context of a country caught up in revolutionary upheaval.

For the sake of those of the students who had gone on to give their lives in the war against Iraq, and for my own sake, I also wanted to give a clear and accurate account of our hopes, our feelings, and of the reasons why we acted as we did—of the beliefs that gave us our courage and sustained us in those tension-filled and difficult days when the hopes and fears of millions of ordinary Iranians were focused on us with such intensity that we often felt we were the very embodiment of those hopes and fears. From this, I hoped, would emerge not only a day-byday account of a crisis that was to shape the relationship between Iran and the United States, but a portrait of a generation that came to maturity in a time of turmoil, and has gone on to assume the highest civic and political responsibilities, and to face great personal dangers.

Unforeseen pitfalls awaited me. On the one hand, I would try to convey the political and spiritual intensity that made it possible for us to carry through with our audacious plan. On the other hand, I would be writing from a different present, looking back on the thoughts and acts of a student from—I hoped—the vantage point of maturity.

It proved to be a difficult balancing act. I would have to turn a critical yet compassionate eye upon an upheaval that brought down a government, consolidated the revolution, reshaped our country, and set it on course for what it has become today. At the same time, I would have to be lucid enough to put the decisions we made, the words we uttered and the things we did in a wider perspective.

Finally, I decided to take the plunge. When I did, it was as though a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. Fortunately I was not alone. My husband’s input was of crucial importance. The opening chapters of the book, relating the prelude to the event and its first days, in which I did not participate directly, are based on his eyewitness account.

Since then, with the support of my family, I have taken on other tasks, the latest one being that of head of Iran’s fledgling Department of the Environment. But my commitment to tell the story as I saw and experienced it remains unshaken. My only capital in this endeavor is honesty. And the conviction that my story—our story—has a right to be heard.

In telling this tale, I had another motivation, as strong as the first.

As, over the years, I read the published accounts of the embassy takeover, I had come to feel a growing sense of frustration—and of responsibility. Each of these accounts seemed to be either a distortion or worse, a falsification of the events that I, as a participant, had witnessed close up. At best, they were fragmentary and inconclusive. Some, the memoirs of the hostages themselves, were sincere but their scope—I will be the first to admit—was limited by the circumstances into which our action had thrust them. Those written by journalists and political analysts were another matter altogether. Through them a stereotyped version had emerged in the West, a version seen from an entirely Western viewpoint, presenting what we did as the result of manipulation by political forces in Iran, and depicting us as extremists, fanatics, or as the stooges of dark and ominous powers. The information upon which this version was based was fragmentary, its sources ill-defined, and its bias apparent.

Though it was painful, it certainly came as no surprise to me that this, the officially received version, reflected—with only a few minor exceptions—not a single Iranian viewpoint, not a single Iranian voice. The Iranian participants had never had the opportunity to tell their own side of these events. They were never asked, their opinions never solicited. We found ourselves excluded from our own story, on the outside looking in.

For this we must bear some of the blame. Our silence has lasted too long. We may have created the impression that we had nothing to say. Or worse, that we acquiesced in the official version.

This book—which breaks that silence for the first time in print—is intended as a long-needed corrective to the stereotypical account of which I speak, and as an antidote to the distorted images conveyed by the world media not only during and immediately after the capture of the embassy, but right up to this day.

I have yet another incentive to write this memoir. I believe that the cultural gap between the peoples of the developing world and those of the developed world—what we now term the South and the North—has grown wider over the last twenty years. Inequalities, instead of being ameliorated by globalization, are on the increase. Differences in cultural heritage may well account for a part of this deepening chasm, but surely one of its primary sources must be the inaccurate or even biased reporting by Western media of events that have captured the imagination of millions in the developing countries.

Can the misconceptions and misjudgments which have been created by years of conscious disinformation ever be put right, I wondered, as I began the task of sifting through my notes, diaries and memories? Can the American and Iranian peoples ever hope to overcome the barriers of propaganda and fiery rhetoric that now stand between them, and finally come to understand one another? The only way—and this is the ultimate aim of my account of the fateful events of 1979 and 1980 in Tehran—to alleviate tensions between the two nations, is to engage the two diverse and different cultures in a constructive dialogue.

This book is a contribution to the dialogue that must take place, sooner or later.

It is based on my written diary and recollections of the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran as I experienced it. Even though more than two decades have passed, the memory of those days persists so vividly in my mind that it all seems to have happened only yesterday. The persons and events mentioned here are, of course, all real, although several of us did not use our real names. (Such instances are noted in the text.) When we concealed our identities, we did so not out of fear, but out of our desire to be known as the youth of the people. We were convinced that our collective spirit and our intentions were much more important than our individual personalities. Such was the temper of the