Fifty-three United States diplomats and citizens were held hostage in Iran from November 4, 1979 to their release on January 20, 1981. They were taken as hostages by a group of armed Iranian college students who supported the Iranian Revolution, including Hossein Dehghan, Mohammad Ali Jafari and Mohammad Bagheri. The students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The crisis is considered a pivotal episode in the history of Iran–United States relations.
Thomas Reeve Pickering is a retired United States ambassador. Among his many diplomatic appointments, he served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1989 to 1992.
Iran–United Kingdom relations are the bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Iran. Iran, which was called Persia by the West before 1935, has had political relations with England since the late Ilkhanate period when King Edward I of England sent Geoffrey of Langley to the Ilkhanid court to seek an alliance.
The first Persian envoy to Denmark arrived in 1691 in order to negotiate the release of the Iranian-owned cargo of a Bengali ship seized by the Danish fleet. The Iranian diplomat had been issued with diplomatic credentials by Suleiman I of Persia and opened negotiations with King Christian V of Denmark. He was unable to secure the release of the cargo.
The "Canadian Caper" was the joint covert rescue by the Canadian government and the CIA of six American diplomats who had evaded capture during the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979, after the Iranian Revolution, when Islamist students took most of the American embassy personnel hostage, demanding the return of the US-backed Shah for trial.
Lowell Bruce Laingen was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Malta from 1977 to 1979. Laingen is best known for having been the most senior American official held hostage during the Iran hostage crisis, while serving as the chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
The Algiers Accords of January 19, 1981 was a set of obligations and commitments undertaken independently by the United States and Iran to resolve the Iran hostage crisis, brokered by the Algerian government and signed in Algiers on January 19, 1981. The crisis began from the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, where Iranian students took hostage of present American embassy staff. By this accord and its adherence, 52 American citizens were able to leave Iran. With the two countries unable to settle on mutually agreeable terms, particularly for quantitative financial obligations, Algerian mediators proposed an alternative agreement model - one where each country undertook obligations under the accords independently, rather than requiring both countries to mutually adhere to the same terms under a bilateral agreement.
Canada and Iran have had no formal diplomatic relations since 2012. In the absence of diplomatic representation, Italy acts as the protecting power for Canada in Iran and Switzerland acts as Iran's protecting power in Canada.
The Embassy of the United States of America in Tehran was the American diplomatic mission in the Imperial State of Iran. Direct bilateral diplomatic relations between the two governments were severed following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the subsequent seizure of the embassy in November 1979.
The Former Embassy of Iran in Washington, D.C. was the Imperial State of Iran's diplomatic mission to the United States. Direct bilateral Iran–United States relations between the two governments were severed following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the subsequent seizure of hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran.
Argo is a 2012 American biographical historical drama thriller film directed, produced by, and starring Ben Affleck. The screenplay, written by Chris Terrio, was adapted from the 1999 memoir The Master of Disguise by U.S. C.I.A. operative Tony Mendez and the 2007 Wired article "The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran" written by Joshuah Bearman and edited by Nicholas Thompson. The film deals with the "Canadian Caper", in which Mendez led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, under the guise of filming a science-fiction film during the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis.
The 2011 attack on the British Embassy in Iran was a mob action on 29 November 2011 by a crowd of Iranian protesters who stormed the embassy and another British diplomatic compound in Tehran, Iran, ransacking offices and stealing documents. One small building was set on fire during the incident and several people were injured. The Iranian government publicly condemned the violence.
The Embassy of the United Kingdom in Tehran is the United Kingdom's diplomatic mission to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is located at 172 Ferdowsi Avenue in Tehran.
The Iran hostage crisis negotiations were negotiations in 1980 and 1981 between the United States Government and the Iranian Government to end the Iranian hostage crisis. The 52 American hostages, seized from the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, were finally released on 20 January 1981. A detailed account of the hostage crisis and the Algiers Accords is found in American Hostages In Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis [Yale 1985] put together by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Hamid Aboutalebi is a former Iranian diplomat and ambassador. Aboutalebi was previously ambassador of Iran to Australia, the European Union, Belgium, Italy, and a political director general to Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was part of Iran's UN delegation in New York City in the 1990s.
The 2016 attack on the Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran was a mob action on 2 January 2016 by protesters demonstrating against the execution of prominent Saudi Arabian Shi'a cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Mobs stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the Saudi consulate in Mashhad and ransacked them. The embassy building was set on fire with Molotov cocktails and petrol bombs. During the attacks, the police arrived and dispersed protesters from the embassy premises and extinguished the fire.
Victor L. Tomseth is a former American diplomat and U.S. Ambassador (1993–1996) to Laos. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Tehran, Iran and was among the Americans taken hostage by the Iranians from 1979 to 1981.
Jan Kickert is an Austrian diplomat, currently serving as Austrian Ambassador in Rome.
