Misplaced Pages

#609390

204-649: The Iran–Contra affair ( Persian : ماجرای ایران-کنترا ; Spanish : Caso Irán-Contra ), also referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal , the Iran Initiative , or simply Iran–Contra , was a political scandal in the United States that centered around the revelation that senior officials in the Ronald Reagan administration secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran from 1981 to 1986. As Iran

408-835: A "moderate" faction in the Islamic Republic, as the Americans liked to pretend to themselves, but rather with all the factions in the Iranian government—including those who were very much involved in terrorism. Despite this, the talks were not broken off. After a leak by Mehdi Hashemi , a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the arrangement on 3 November 1986. According to Seymour Hersh , an unnamed former military officer told him that

612-401: A CIA communications technician, smashed his head into the corner of a door, knocking himself unconscious and cutting a deep gash. "Naturally withdrawn" and looking "ill, old, tired, and vulnerable," Miele had become the butt of his guards' jokes, and they had rigged up a mock electric chair to emphasize the fate that awaited him. His fellow hostages applied first aid and raised the alarm, and he

816-655: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to

1020-481: A State Sponsor of Terrorism since January 1984, Iran was in the midst of the Iran–Iraq War and could find few Western nations willing to supply it with weapons. The idea behind the plan was for Israel to ship weapons through an intermediary (identified as Manucher Ghorbanifar ) to the Islamic Republic as a way of aiding a supposedly moderate, politically influential faction within the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini who

1224-499: A chance to free hostages'." Now retired National Security Advisor McFarlane flew to London to meet with Israelis and Ghorbanifar in an attempt to persuade the Iranian to use his influence to release the hostages before any arms transactions occurred; this plan was rejected by Ghorbanifar. On the day of McFarlane's resignation, Oliver North , a military aide to the US National Security Council (NSC), proposed

1428-461: A concession. The only African-American hostage not released that month was Charles A. Jones, Jr. One more hostage, a white man named Richard Queen , was released in July 1980 after he became seriously ill with what was later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis . The remaining 52 hostages were held until January 1981, up to 444 days of captivity. The hostages were initially held at the embassy, but after

1632-558: A deal with the Iranian Government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the fall of 1980" led to "limited investigations". However "limited", those investigations established that "Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy." Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, "the Reagan Administration" presented

1836-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in

2040-574: A different face, and "aggressively promoted a public campaign [...] to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran". The New York Times explains: "Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal to defend itself against Iraq, which had attacked it in September 1980", while "Israel [a US ally] was interested in keeping the war between Iran and Iraq going to ensure that these two potential enemies remained preoccupied with each other". Major General Avraham Tamir,

2244-404: A further nationally televised address, saying he was taking full responsibility for the affair and stating that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages." The affair was investigated by Congress and by the three-person, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission . Neither investigation found evidence that President Reagan himself knew of

SECTION 10

#1732772157610

2448-545: A government shredder to jam it. Hall also testified that she smuggled classified documents out of the Old Executive Office Building by concealing them in her boots and dress. North's explanation for destroying some documents was to protect the lives of individuals involved in Iran and Contra operations. It was not until 1993, years after the trial, that North's notebooks were made public, and only after

2652-684: A guided tour at midnight of the White House. North frequently met with Bahramani in the summer and autumn of 1986 in West Germany, discussing arms sales to Iran, the freeing of hostages held by Hezbollah and how best to overthrow President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the establishment of "a non-hostile regime in Baghdad". In September and October 1986, three more Americans—Frank Reed, Joseph Cicippio, and Edward Tracy—were abducted in Lebanon by

2856-451: A handwritten inscription by Ronald Reagan and, according to George W. Cave , a cake baked in the shape of a key. Howard Teicher described the cake as a joke between North and Ghorbanifar. McFarlane met directly with Iranian officials associated with Rafsanjani, who sought to establish US–Iranian relations in an attempt to free the four remaining hostages. The US delegation comprised McFarlane, North, Cave (a retired CIA officer who served as

3060-516: A high-ranking Israeli Defense Ministry official in 1981, said there was an "oral agreement" to allow the sale of "spare parts" to Iran. This was based on an "understanding" with Secretary Alexander Haig (which a Haig adviser denied). This account was confirmed by a former senior US diplomat with a few modifications. The diplomat claimed that "[Ariel] Sharon violated it, and Haig backed away". A former "high-level" Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official who saw reports of arms sales to Iran by Israel in

3264-699: A joint covert operation known as the Canadian caper , the Canadian government and the CIA managed to smuggle them out of Iran on January 28, 1980, using Canadian passports and a cover story that identified them as a film crew. Others went to the Swedish Embassy in Tehran for three months. A State Department diplomatic cable of November 8, 1979, details "A Tentative, Incomplete List of U.S. Personnel Being Held in

3468-505: A language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi , which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian

3672-417: A literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from

3876-652: A meeting with an American official, exclaiming: "We are not mistreating the hostages. They are being very well taken care of in Tehran. They are our guests." The actual treatment of the hostages was far different. They described beatings, theft, and fear of bodily harm. Two of them, William Belk and Kathryn Koob, recalled being paraded blindfolded before an angry, chanting crowd outside the embassy. Others reported having their hands bound "day and night" for days or even weeks, long periods of solitary confinement, and months of being forbidden to speak to one another or to stand, walk, or leave their space unless they were going to

4080-475: A meeting". This does not come as a surprise considering the possible short and long-term effects of anesthesia on patients above the age of 60, in addition to his already weakened physical and mental state. According to Reagan, these Iranians sought to establish a quiet relationship with the US, before establishing formal relationships upon the death of the aging Ayatollah. In Reagan's account, McFarlane told Reagan that

4284-582: A new plan for selling arms to Iran, which included two major adjustments: instead of selling arms through Israel, the sale was to be direct at a markup; and a portion of the proceeds would go to the Contras , Nicaraguan paramilitary fighters waging guerrilla warfare against the Sandinista government , claiming power after an election full of irregularities. The dealings with the Iranians were conducted via

SECTION 20

#1732772157610

4488-475: A new plan was introduced. This called for a slight change in the arms transactions: instead of the weapons going to the "moderate" Iranian group, they would go to "moderate" Iranian army leaders. As each weapons delivery was made from Israel by air, hostages held by Hezbollah would be released. Israel would continue to be reimbursed by the US for the weapons. Though staunchly opposed by Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger ,

4692-567: A new relationship with the de facto Iranian government and continuing military cooperation in hopes that the situation would stabilize. However, on October 22, 1979, the United States permitted the shah, who had lymphoma , to enter New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center for medical treatment. The State Department had discouraged this decision, understanding the political delicacy. But in response to pressure from influential figures including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Council on Foreign Relations Chairman David Rockefeller ,

4896-536: A period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and

5100-514: A press conference in which Kathy Gross and William Quarles praised the revolution's aims, but four further women and six African-Americans were released the following day. According to the then United States Ambassador to Lebanon, John Gunther Dean , the 13 hostages were released with the assistance of the Palestine Liberation Organization , after Yassir Arafat and Abu Jihad personally traveled to Tehran to secure

5304-612: A rapprochement with the US or was just deceiving Reagan administration officials who were willing to believe that he was a moderate who would effect a rapprochement. Rafsanjani, whose nickname is "the Shark", was described by the UK journalist Patrick Brogan as a man of great charm and formidable intelligence known for his subtlety and ruthlessness whose motives in the Iran–Contra affair remain completely mysterious. The Israeli government required that

5508-437: A rescue mission – Operation Eagle Claw – using warships that included USS  Nimitz and USS  Coral Sea , which were patrolling the waters near Iran. The failed attempt on April 24, 1980, resulted in the death of one Iranian civilian and the accidental deaths of eight American servicemen after one of the helicopters crashed into a transport aircraft. U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned his position following

5712-685: A retired U.S. Air Force officer turned arms dealer Richard Secord that supplied arms to the Contras. It was ostensibly a private sector operation, but in fact was controlled by the NSC. To fund "the Enterprise", the Reagan administration was constantly on the look-out for funds that came from outside the U.S. government in order not to explicitly violate the letter of the Boland Amendment, though

5916-675: A separate terrorist group, who referred to them simply as "G.I. Joe", after the popular US toy. The reasons for their abduction are unknown, although it is speculated that they were kidnapped to replace the freed Americans. One more original hostage, David Jacobsen, was later released. The captors promised to release the remaining two, but the release never happened. During a secret meeting in Frankfurt in October 1986, North told Bahramani that: "Saddam Hussein must go". North also claimed that Reagan had told him to tell Bahramani that: "Saddam Hussein

6120-599: A speaker of Persian. Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages , which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision . The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are

6324-406: A way of expressing gratitude. Casey also justified this request by stating that the contact in the Iranian government might otherwise lose face or be executed, and hostages might be killed. Reagan authorized the shipment to ensure that those potential events would not occur. North used this release to persuade Reagan to switch over to a "sequential" policy of freeing the hostages one by one, instead of

Iran–Contra affair - Misplaced Pages Continue

6528-617: A working relationship with the "moderate" faction associated with Rafsanjani to facilitate the reestablishment of the US–Iranian alliance after the soon to be expected death of Khomeini, to end the Iran–Iraq War and end Iranian support for Islamic terrorism while downplaying the importance of freeing the hostages in Lebanon as a secondary issue. By contrast, when testifying before the Tower Commission, Reagan declared that hostage issue

6732-615: Is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It

6936-664: Is a continuation of Middle Persian , an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars ( Persia ) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia . Old Persian

7140-628: Is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of

7344-799: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian

7548-519: Is an asshole." Behramani during a secret meeting in Mainz informed North that Rafsanjani "for his own politics [...] decided to get all the groups involved and give them a role to play". Thus, all the factions in the Iranian government would be jointly responsible for the talks with the Americans and "there would not be an internal war". This demand of Behramani caused much dismay on the US side as it made clear to them that they would not be dealing solely with

7752-675: Is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic -derived scripts ( Pahlavi and Manichaean ) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature ). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia , since then adopting

7956-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of

8160-460: Is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with

8364-475: Is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto . The term Dari , meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon , which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia ( Parthian ). Tajik Persian ( форси́и тоҷикӣ́ , forsi-i tojikī ),

Iran–Contra affair - Misplaced Pages Continue

8568-585: Is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became

8772-495: Is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater , founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology , rejecting

8976-436: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes

9180-506: The Kalila wa Dimna . The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca , a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on

9384-408: The 25th Amendment prior to the surgery was a risky and unprecedented decision that smoothly flew under the radar for the duration of the complex situation. While it only lasted slightly longer than the length of the procedure (approximately seven hours and 54 minutes), this temporary transfer of power was never formally recognized by the White House. It was later revealed that this decision was made on

9588-630: The Boland Amendment . Administration officials argued that, regardless of Congress restricting funds for the Contras, or any affair, the President (or in this case the administration) could carry on by seeking alternative means of funding such as private entities and foreign governments. Funding from one foreign country, Brunei , was botched when North's secretary, Fawn Hall , transposed the numbers of North's Swiss bank account number. A Swiss businessperson, suddenly $ 10 million richer, alerted

9792-668: The British colonization , Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent . It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors . The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of

9996-515: The Golan Heights , which the US rejected. More importantly, McFarlane refused to ship spare parts for the Hawk missiles until the Iranians had Hezbollah release the US hostages, whereas the Iranians wanted to reverse that sequence with the spare parts being shipped first before the hostages were freed. The differing negotiating positions led to McFarlane's mission going home after four days. After

10200-877: The Iranian Revolution , the U.S. was the largest seller of arms to Iran under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , and the vast majority of the weapons that the Islamic Republic of Iran inherited in January 1979 were U.S.-made. To maintain this arsenal, Iran required a steady supply of spare parts to replace those broken and worn out. In November 1979, after Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage , U.S. President Jimmy Carter imposed an arms embargo on Iran. In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran and Iran desperately needed weapons and spare parts for its current weapons. After Ronald Reagan took office as president on 20 January 1981 and

10404-452: The Majlis who was seen as a leading potential successor to Khomeini and who was alleged to want a rapprochement with the US. The Americans believed that Rafsanjani had the power to order Hezbollah to free the US hostages and establishing a relationship with him by selling Iran arms would ultimately place Iran back within the US sphere of influence. It remains unclear if Rafsanjani really wanted

SECTION 50

#1732772157610

10608-656: The National Security Archive and Public Citizen sued the Office of the Independent Counsel under the Freedom of Information Act . What is involved is that in the course of the arms transfers, which involved the United States providing the arms to Israel and Israel in turn transferring the arms -- in effect, selling the arms to representatives of Iran. Certain monies which were received in

10812-541: The Oval Office on 13 November, stating: My purpose was [...] to send a signal that the United States was prepared to replace the animosity between [the US and Iran] with a new relationship [...]. At the same time we undertook this initiative, we made clear that Iran must oppose all forms of international terrorism as a condition of progress in our relationship. The most significant step which Iran could take, we indicated, would be to use its influence in Lebanon to secure

11016-674: The Sultanate of Rum , Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia , Delhi Sultanate , the Shirvanshahs , Safavids , Afsharids , Zands , Qajars , Khanate of Bukhara , Khanate of Kokand , Emirate of Bukhara , Khanate of Khiva , Ottomans , and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad . Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of

11220-439: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of

11424-514: The University of Tehran , Sharif University of Technology , Amirkabir University of Technology (Polytechnic of Tehran), and Iran University of Science and Technology . They named their group Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line . Asgharzadeh later said there were five students at the first meeting, two of whom wanted to target the Soviet Embassy because the USSR was "a Marxist and anti-God regime". Two others, Mohsen Mirdamadi and Habibolah Bitaraf , supported Asgharzadeh's chosen target,

11628-423: The ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye ), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian

11832-479: The " Persianized " Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent . It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids , Tahirids , Ziyarids , the Mughal Empire , Timurids , Ghaznavids , Karakhanids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians ,

12036-429: The "all or nothing" policy that the Americans had pursued until then. By this point, the Americans had grown tired of Ghorbanifar who had proven himself a dishonest intermediary who played off both sides to his own commercial advantage. In August 1986, the Americans had established a new contact in the Iranian government, Ali Hashemi Bahramani, the nephew of Rafsanjani and an officer in the Revolutionary Guard. The fact that

12240-410: The "national security state", the law was an obstacle to be surmounted rather than something to uphold and that the Iran–Contra affair was just "business as usual", something he asserted that the media missed by focusing on the NSC having "gone operational." In Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981–1987 , journalist Bob Woodward chronicled the role of the CIA in facilitating the transfer of funds from

12444-403: The 1953 coup, rather than the US embassy takeover. He has warned against attempts to distort history in this regard. Months before the Iranian Revolution , on New Year's Eve 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter further angered anti-shah Iranians with a televised toast to Pahlavi, claiming that the shah was "beloved" by his people. After the revolution commenced in February 1979 with the return of

SECTION 60

#1732772157610

12648-411: The Ayatollah Khomeini , the American Embassy was occupied, and its staff held hostage briefly. Rocks and bullets had broken so many of the embassy's front-facing windows that they were replaced with bulletproof glass . The embassy's staff was reduced to just over 60 from a high of nearly one thousand earlier in the decade. The Carter administration tried to mitigate anti-American feeling by promoting

12852-572: The Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi , are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij , Ahmad Shamlou , Simin Behbahani , Sohrab Sepehri , Rahi Mo'ayyeri , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , and Forugh Farrokhzad . There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians , Lurs , Tajiks , Hazaras , Iranian Azeris , Iranian Kurds , Balochs , Tats , Afghan Pashtuns , and Aimaqs . The term Persophone might also be used to refer to

13056-496: The Boland Amendment, senior officials of the Reagan administration continued to secretly arm and train the Contras and provide arms to Iran, an operation they called "the Enterprise". Given the Contras' heavy dependence on U.S. military and financial support, the second Boland Amendment threatened to break the Contra movement and led to President Reagan ordering in 1984 that the NSC "keep the Contras together 'body and soul ' ", no matter what Congress voted for. A major legal debate at

13260-415: The Boland Amendments. By contrast, Congressional leaders argued that the constitution had assigned Congress control of the budget, and Congress had every right to use that power not to fund projects they disapproved of, such as attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. As part of the effort to circumvent the Boland Amendment, the NSC established "the Enterprise", an arms-smuggling network headed by

13464-440: The Carter administration decided to grant it. The shah's admission to the United States intensified Iranian revolutionaries' anti-Americanism and spawned rumors of another U.S.–backed coup that would re-install him. Khomeini, who had been exiled by the shah for 15 years, heightened the rhetoric against the " Great Satan ", as he called the U.S, talking of "evidence of American plotting." In addition to ending what they believed

13668-412: The Contras insurgency was made illegal through the Boland Amendment , the name given to three U.S. legislative amendments between 1982 and 1984 aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to Contra militants. By 1984, funding for the Contras had run out; and, in October of that year, a total ban came into effect. The second Boland Amendment, in effect from 3 October 1984 to 3 December 1985, stated: During

13872-423: The Embassy Compound." The Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line demanded that Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi return to Iran for trial and execution. The U.S. maintained that the Shah – who was to die less than a year later, in July 1980 – had come to America for medical attention. The group's other demands included that the U.S. government apologize for its interference in the internal affairs of Iran, including

14076-440: The General Staff of the Iranian Army ). 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 . Western media described the crisis as an "entanglement" of "vengeance and mutual incomprehension". U.S. President Jimmy Carter called the hostage-taking an act of "blackmail" and the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy". In Iran, it

14280-405: The Iran arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras spearheaded by Oliver North. According to Woodward, then-Director of the CIA William J. Casey admitted to him in February 1987 that he was aware of the diversion of funds to the Contras. The controversial admission occurred while Casey was hospitalized for a stroke , and, according to his wife, was unable to communicate. On 6 May 1987, William Casey died

14484-404: The Iranian government, so, with the hope of the release of the hostages, Reagan approved this plan as well. Throughout February 1986, weapons were shipped directly to Iran by the US (as part of Oliver North's plan), but none of the hostages were released. Retired National Security Advisor McFarlane conducted another international voyage, this one to Tehran —bringing with him a gift of a Bible with

14688-510: The Iranians refused to buy the arms at the inflated price because of the excessive markup imposed by North and Ghorbanifar. They eventually relented, and, in February 1986, 1,000 TOW missiles were shipped to the country. From May to November 1986, there were additional shipments of miscellaneous weapons and parts. Both the sale of weapons to Iran and the funding of the Contras attempted to circumvent not only stated administration policy, but also

14892-572: The Iranians, to demonstrate their seriousness, offered to persuade the Hezbollah militants to release the seven US hostages. McFarlane met with the Israeli intermediaries; Reagan claimed that he allowed this because he believed that establishing relations with a strategically located country, and preventing the Soviet Union from doing the same, was a beneficial move. Although Reagan claims that

15096-475: The Islamic Republic as a counter to neoliberal American influence. Revolutionary teams displayed secret documents purportedly taken from the embassy, sometimes painstakingly reconstructed after shredding , to buttress their claim that the U.S. was trying to destabilize the new regime. By embracing the hostage-taking under the slogan "America can't do a thing," Khomeini rallied support and deflected criticism of his controversial theocratic constitution , which

15300-625: The Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi , by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian , exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian ( فارسی , fārsi ). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari ( دری , dari ) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it

15504-525: The Middle East and overthrowing the governments of Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the other states around the Persian Gulf , which led to the Americans perceiving Khomeini as a major threat to the U.S. In the spring of 1983, the U.S. launched Operation Staunch , a wide-ranging diplomatic effort to persuade other nations all over the world not to sell arms or spare parts for weapons to Iran. This

15708-438: The NSC with Admiral Poindexter and his deputy Colonel North, with the US historians Malcolm Byrne and Peter Kornbluh writing that Poindexter granted much power to North "who made the most of the situation, often deciding important matters on his own, striking outlandish deals with the Iranians, and acting in the name of the president on issues that were far beyond his competence. All of these activities continued to take place within

15912-491: The NSC, gave it the vague right to perform "such other functions and duties related to the intelligence as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." However, the NSC had usually, although not always, acted as an advisory agency until the Reagan administration when the NSC had "gone operational", a situation that was condemned by both the Tower Commission and by Congress as a departure from

16116-543: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After

16320-574: The People's Mojahedin of Iran had amongst students in Iran. According to scholar Daniel Pipes , writing in 1980, the Marxist -leaning leftists and the Islamists shared a common antipathy toward market-based reforms under the late Shah, and both subsumed individualism, including the unique identity of women, under conservative, though contrasting, visions of collectivism. Accordingly, both groups favored

16524-530: The Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription , dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey, and Egypt . Old Persian

16728-481: The Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki . He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in

16932-401: The Persian model: Ottoman Turkish , Chagatai Turkic , Dobhashi Bengali , and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry . This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under

17136-886: The Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world , with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia , the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages,

17340-557: The Revolutionary Guard was deeply involved in international terrorism seemed only to attract the Americans more to Bahramani, who was seen as someone with the influence to change Iran's policies. Richard Secord , a US arms dealer, who was being used as a contact with Iran, wrote to North: "My judgment is that we have opened up a new and probably better channel into Iran". North was so impressed with Bahramani that he arranged for him to secretly visit Washington DC and gave him

17544-484: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised

17748-588: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)

17952-462: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of

18156-542: The Soviet Union over the United States in the early months of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets, and possibly their allies Cuba , Libya , and East Germany, were suspected of providing indirect assistance to the participants in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The PLO under Yasser Arafat provided personnel, intelligence liaisons, funding, and training for Khomeini's forces before and after

18360-606: The U.S. Espionage Den ( Persian : اسناد لانه جاسوسی امریكا ). According to a 1997 Federation of American Scientists bulletin, by 1995, 77 volumes of Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den had been published. Many of these volumes are now available online. The hostage-takers, declaring their solidarity with other "oppressed minorities" and declaring their respect for "the special place of women in Islam ," released one woman and two African Americans on November 19. Before release, these hostages were required by their captors to hold

18564-525: The U.S. in December 1979 and was ultimately granted asylum in Egypt , where he died from complications of cancer at age 60 on July 27, 1980. Six American diplomats who had evaded capture were rescued by a joint CIA–Canadian effort on January 27, 1980. The crisis reached a climax in early 1980 after diplomatic negotiations failed to win the release of the hostages. Carter ordered the U.S. military to attempt

18768-484: The United States. "Our aim was to object against the American government by going to their embassy and occupying it for several hours," Asgharzadeh said. "Announcing our objections from within the occupied compound would carry our message to the world in a much more firm and effective way." Mirdamadi told an interviewer, "We intended to detain the diplomats for a few days, maybe one week, but no more." Masoumeh Ebtekar ,

18972-417: The amendment did not mention the NSC by name. The broader constitutional question at stake was the power of Congress versus the power of the presidency. The Reagan administration argued that, because the constitution assigned the right to conduct foreign policy to the executive, its efforts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua were a presidential prerogative that Congress had no right to try to halt via

19176-498: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before

19380-583: The arms sales were to a "moderate" faction of Iranians, the Walsh Iran–Contra Report states that the arms sales were "to Iran" itself, which was under the control of the Ayatollah. Following the Israeli–US meeting, Israel requested permission from the US to sell a small number of BGM-71 TOW antitank missiles to Iran, claiming that this would aid the "moderate" Iranian faction, by demonstrating that

19584-590: The arms shipments was that they were part of an operation to free seven U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah , an Islamist paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps . The idea to exchange arms for hostages was proposed by Manucher Ghorbanifar , an expatriate Iranian arms dealer. Some within the Reagan administration hoped the sales would influence Iran to get Hezbollah to release

19788-467: The authorities of the mistake. The money was eventually returned to the Sultan of Brunei , with interest. On 7 January 1986, John Poindexter proposed to Reagan a modification of the approved plan: instead of negotiating with the "moderate" Iranian political group, the US would negotiate with "moderate" members of the Iranian government. Poindexter told Reagan that Ghorbanifar had important connections within

19992-413: The bathroom. All of the hostages "were threatened repeatedly with execution, and took it seriously." The hostage-takers played Russian roulette with their victims. One hostage, Michael Metrinko, was kept in solitary confinement for several months. On two occasions, when he expressed his opinion of Ayatollah Khomeini, he was severely punished. The first time, he was kept in handcuffs for two weeks, and

20196-460: The bathroom. At first, they were treated as diplomats, but after the provisional government fell, the treatment of them deteriorated. By March, the doors to their living space were kept "chained and padlocked." By midsummer 1980, the Iranians had moved the hostages to prisons in Tehran to prevent escapes or rescue attempts and to improve the logistics of guard shifts and food deliveries. The final holding area, from November 1980 until their release,

20400-490: The center of the Iran–Contra affair concerned the question of whether the NSC was one of the "any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities" covered by the Boland Amendment. The Reagan administration argued it was not, and many in Congress argued that it was. The majority of constitutional scholars have asserted the NSC did indeed fall within the purview of the second Boland Amendment, though

20604-457: The code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari ( prs ) and Iranian Persian ( pes ). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history ; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being

20808-512: The collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script . From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi , which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by

21012-407: The constitution to the people's vote without difficulty, and carry out presidential and parliamentary elections. Various leftist student groups also supported the taking of hostages at the US embassy. The embassy take-over was aimed at strengthening the new regime against liberal elements in the government, portraying the regime as a "revolutionary force" while winning over the major following that

21216-486: The crimes he was accused of committing against Iranians during his rule through his secret police . These demands were rejected, which Iran saw as U.S. complicity in those abuses. The U.S. saw the hostage-taking as an egregious violation of the principles of international law, such as the Vienna Convention , which granted diplomats immunity from arrest and made diplomatic compounds inviolable. The shah left

21420-461: The day after Congress began public hearings on Iran–Contra. Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh later wrote: "Independent Counsel obtained no documentary evidence showing Casey knew about or approved the diversion. The only direct testimony linking Casey to early knowledge of the diversion came from [Oliver] North." Gust Avrakodos, who was responsible for the arms supplies to the Afghans at this time,

21624-527: The day after the signing of the Algiers Accords , just minutes after American President Ronald Reagan was sworn into office . In Iran, the crisis strengthened the prestige of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the political power of theocrats who opposed any normalization of relations with the West. The crisis also led to American economic sanctions against Iran , which further weakened ties between

21828-628: The deal. Noriega was apparently one of these intermediaries but backed out on the deal as the ship and weapons were seized at a Panamanian port. The Pia Vesta led to a small controversy, as the Panama and Peru governments in 1986 accused the U.S. and each other of being involved in the East Germany-originated shipment. As reported in The New York Times in 1991, "continuing allegations that Reagan campaign officials made

22032-417: The delivery from Israel of 100 TOW missiles [...]. The plan was discussed with President Reagan on 18 July 1985 and again on 6 August 1985. Shultz at the latter meeting warned Reagan that "we were just falling into the arms-for-hostages business and we shouldn't do it". The Americans believed that there was a moderate faction in the Islamic Republic headed by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani , the powerful speaker of

22236-463: The demonstrations organized by Iranian student unions loyal to Khomeini erupted into an all-out conflict right outside the walled compound housing the U.S. Embassy. At about 6:30 a.m., the ringleaders gathered between three hundred and five hundred selected students and briefed them on the battle plan. A female student was given a pair of metal cutters to break the chains locking the embassy's gates and hid them beneath her chador . At first,

22440-415: The dizziness worsened until he "was literally flat on his back, unable to move without growing dizzy and throwing up." The cruelty of the Iranian prison guards became "a form of slow torture." The guards often withheld mail – telling one hostage, Charles W. Scott, "I don't see anything for you, Mr. Scott. Are you sure your wife has not found another man?" – and the hostages' possessions went missing. As

22644-427: The early 1980s estimated that the total was about $ 2 billion a year—but also said, "The degree to which it was sanctioned I don't know." On 17 June 1985, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane wrote a National Security Decision Directive which called for the US to begin a rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The paper read: Dynamic political evolution is taking place inside Iran. Instability caused by

22848-474: The efforts to find alternative funding for the Contras violated the spirit of the Boland Amendment. Ironically, military aid to the Contras was reinstated with Congressional consent in October 1986, a month before the scandal broke. In his 1995 memoir My American Journey , General Colin Powell , the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor , wrote that the weapons sales to Iran were used "for purposes prohibited by

23052-458: The elected representatives of the American people [...] in a way that avoided accountability to the President and Congress. It was wrong." In 1985, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega offered to help the U.S. by allowing Panama as a staging ground for operations against the FSLN and offering to train Contras in Panama, but this would later be overshadowed by the Iran–Contra affair itself. At around

23256-409: The embassy and released by the hostage-takers led to the disempowerment and resignation of moderate figures such as Bazargan. The failed rescue attempt and the political danger of any move seen as accommodating America delayed a negotiated release of the hostages. After the crisis ended, leftists and theocrats turned on each other, with the stronger theocratic group annihilating the left. Supporters of

23460-460: The embassy to show their support for the takeover, it would be "very hard, perhaps even impossible," for him to oppose the takeover, and this would paralyze the Bazargan administration, which Khoeiniha and the students wanted to eliminate. Supporters of the takeover stated that their motivation was fear of another American-backed coup against their popular revolution. On November 4, 1979, one of

23664-494: The embassy, sometimes painstakingly reconstructed after shredding , in order to buttress their claim that "the Great Satan" (the U.S.) was trying to destabilize the new regime with the assistance of Iranian moderates who were in league with the U.S. The documents – including telegrams, correspondence, and reports from the U.S. State Department and the CIA – were published in a series of books which were titled Documents from

23868-652: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak

24072-515: The extent of the multiple programs. Additionally, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Walsh was appointed independent counsel in December 1986 to investigate possible criminal actions by officials involved in the scheme. In the end, several dozen administration officials were indicted, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Lieutenant colonel Oliver North . Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in

24276-421: The failure of the secret visit to Tehran, McFarlane advised Reagan not to talk to the Iranians anymore, advice that was disregarded. On 26 July 1986, Hezbollah freed the US hostage Father Lawrence Jenco , former head of Catholic Relief Services in Lebanon. Following this, William J. Casey , head of the CIA, requested that the US authorize sending a shipment of small missile parts to Iranian military forces as

24480-431: The failure. In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, beginning the Iran–Iraq War . These events led the Iranian government to enter negotiations with the U.S., with Algeria acting as a mediator. Political analysts cited the standoff as a major factor in the continuing downfall of Carter's presidency and his landslide loss in the 1980 presidential election . The hostages were formally released into United States custody

24684-670: The final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush , who had been vice president at the time of the affair. Former Independent Counsel Walsh noted that, in issuing the pardons, Bush appeared to have been preempting being implicated himself by evidence that came to light during the Weinberger trial and noted that there was a pattern of "deception and obstruction" by Bush, Weinberger, and other senior Reagan administration officials. Walsh submitted his final report on 4 August 1993 and later wrote an account of his experiences as counsel, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up . Prior to

24888-627: The fiscal year 1985 no funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities may be obligated or expended for the purpose of or which may have the effect of supporting directly or indirectly military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, organization, group, movement, or individual. In violation of

25092-633: The following phylogenetic classification: Iranian hostage crisis Hostages released by Algiers Accords [REDACTED]   Iran 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 (future Iranian Minister of Defense), Mohammad Ali Jafari (future Revolutionary Guards Commander-In-Chief) and Mohammad Bagheri (future Chief of

25296-577: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to

25500-476: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like

25704-529: The framework of the president's broad authorization. Until the press reported on the existence of the operation, nobody in the administration questioned the authority of Poindexter's and North's team to implement the president's decisions". North proposed a $ 15 million markup, while contracted arms broker Ghorbanifar added a 41-percent markup of his own. Other members of the NSC were in favor of North's plan; with large support, Poindexter authorized it without notifying President Reagan, and it went into effect. At first,

25908-453: The grounds that "Mr. Reagan and his advisors did not want his actions to establish a definition of incapacitation that would bind future presidents." Reagan expressed this transfer of power in two identical letters that were sent to the speaker of the House of Representatives, Representative Tip O'Neill , and the president pro tempore of the senate, Senator Strom Thurmond . While the President

26112-481: The group actually had high-level connections to the US government. Reagan initially rejected the plan, until Israel sent information to the US showing that the "moderate" Iranians were opposed to terrorism and had fought against it. Now having a reason to trust the "moderates", Reagan approved the transaction, which was meant to be between Israel and the "moderates" in Iran, with the US reimbursing Israel. In his 1990 autobiography An American Life , Reagan claimed that he

26316-536: The group's translator), Teicher, Israeli diplomat Amiram Nir , and a CIA communicator. They arrived in Tehran in an Israeli plane carrying forged Irish passports on 25 May 1986. This meeting also failed. Much to McFarlane's disgust, he did not meet ministers, and instead met in his words "third and fourth level officials". At one point, an angry McFarlane shouted: "As I am a Minister, I expect to meet with decision-makers. Otherwise, you can work with my staff." The Iranians requested concessions such as Israel's withdrawal from

26520-541: The guards would not use deadly force and that a large, angry crowd had gathered outside the compound to cheer the occupiers and jeer the hostages, the plan changed. According to one embassy staff member, buses full of demonstrators began to appear outside the embassy shortly after the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line broke through the gates. As Khomeini's followers had hoped, Khomeini supported

26724-436: The historian Michael Ledeen , a consultant of National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, requested assistance from Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres for help in the sale of arms to Iran. Having talked to an Israeli diplomat David Kimche and Ledeen, McFarlane learned that the Iranians were prepared to have Hezbollah release US hostages in Lebanon in exchange for Israelis shipping Iran US weapons. Having been designated

26928-415: The hostage who was sent home because of his multiple sclerosis , first developed dizziness and numbness in his left arm six months before his release. At first, the Iranians misdiagnosed his symptoms as a reaction to drafts of cold air. When warmer confinement did not help, he was told that it was "nothing" because the symptoms would disappear soon. Over the months, the numbness spread to his right side, and

27132-430: The hostages were "guests" and it also stated that they were being treated with respect. Asgharzadeh, the leader of the students, described the original plan as a nonviolent and symbolic action in which the students would use their "gentle and respectful treatment" of the hostages to dramatize the offended sovereignty and dignity of Iran to the entire world. In America, an Iranian chargé d'affaires , Ali Agha, stormed out of

27336-509: The hostages were released, he vowed to continue Carter's policy of blocking arms sales to Iran on the grounds that Iran supported terrorism. However, a group of senior Reagan administration officials in the Senior Interdepartmental Group conducted a secret study on 21 July 1981 and concluded that the arms embargo was ineffective because Iran could always buy arms and spare parts for its U.S. weapons elsewhere, while, at

27540-558: The hostages were taken to the aircraft that would fly them out of Tehran, they were led through a gauntlet of students forming parallel lines and shouting, "Marg bar Amrika" (" death to America "). When the pilot announced that they were out of Iran, the "freed hostages went wild with happiness. Shouting, cheering, crying, clapping, falling into one another's arms." In the United States, the hostage crisis created "a surge of patriotism" and left "the American people more united than they have been on any issue in two decades." The hostage-taking

27744-435: The hostages. A later study claimed that there had been no American plots to overthrow the revolutionaries, and that a CIA intelligence-gathering mission at the embassy had been "notably ineffectual, gathering little information and hampered by the fact that none of the three officers spoke the local language, Persian ." Its work, the study said, was "routine, prudent espionage conducted at diplomatic missions everywhere." On

27948-543: The hostages. After the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reported on the weapon dealings in November 1986, it broke international news, causing Reagan to appear on national television. He claimed that while the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, the U.S. did not trade arms for hostages. The investigation was impeded when large volumes of documents relating to the affair were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials. In March 1987, Reagan made

28152-466: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed

28356-466: The leak may have been orchestrated by a covert team led by Arthur S. Moreau Jr. , assistant to the chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, due to fears the scheme had grown out of control. This was the first public report of the weapons-for-hostages deal. The operation was discovered only after an airlift of guns ( Corporate Air Services HPF821 ) was downed over Nicaragua. Eugene Hasenfus , who

28560-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following

28764-619: The militants, tortured, tried, and convicted of murder. He was to be executed, but President Carter and Sullivan secured his release within six days. This incident became known as the Valentine's Day Open House. The next attempt to seize the American Embassy was planned for September 1979 by Ebrahim Asgharzadeh , a student at the time. He consulted with the heads of the Islamic associations of Tehran's main universities, including

28968-476: The morning of February 14, 1979, the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took a Marine named Kenneth Kraus hostage. Ambassador William H. Sullivan surrendered the embassy to save lives, and with the assistance of Iranian Foreign Minister Ebrahim Yazdi , returned the embassy to U.S. hands within three hours. Kraus was injured in the attack, kidnapped by

29172-536: The most widely spoken. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus , the adjectival form of Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which means " Persia " (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars ). According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term Persian as

29376-466: The nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic , Russian , French , and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created

29580-499: The necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography , were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal

29784-414: The next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire , and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian

29988-499: The norm. The American historian John Canham-Clyne asserted that the Iran–Contra affair and the NSC "going operational" were not departures from the norm, but were the logical and natural consequence of the existence of the "national security state", the plethora of shadowy government agencies with multi-million dollar budgets operating with little oversight from Congress, the courts or the media, and for whom upholding national security justified almost everything. Canham-Clyne argued that for

30192-732: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became

30396-538: The occupiers and then paraded in front of assembled photographers. In the first couple of days, many of the embassy workers who had sneaked out of the compound or had not been there at the time of the takeover were rounded up by Islamists and returned as hostages. Six American diplomats managed to avoid capture and took refuge in the British Embassy before being transferred to the Canadian Embassy. In

30600-542: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in

30804-521: The only signed copy of a presidential covert-action finding that sought to authorize CIA participation in the November 1985 Hawk missile shipment to Iran. U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese admitted on 25 November that profits from weapons sales to Iran were made available to assist the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. On the same day, John Poindexter resigned, and President Reagan fired Oliver North. Poindexter

31008-465: The overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953, and that Iran's frozen assets in the United States be released. The initial plan was to hold the embassy for only a short time, but this changed after it became apparent how popular the takeover was and that Khomeini had given it his full support. Some attributed the decision not to release the hostages quickly to President Carter's failure to immediately deliver an ultimatum to Iran. His initial response

31212-664: The plan was authorized by Reagan, who stated that, "We were not trading arms for hostages, nor were we negotiating with terrorists". In his notes of a meeting held in the White House on 7 December 1985, Weinberger wrote he told Reagan that this plan was illegal, writing: I argued strongly that we have an embargo that makes arms sales to Iran illegal and President couldn't violate it and that 'washing' transactions through Israel wouldn't make it legal. Shultz, Don Regan agreed. Weinberger's notes have Reagan saying he "could answer charges of illegality but he couldn't answer charge [ sic ] that 'big strong President Reagan passed up

31416-432: The police to expel the students as they had the occupiers in February. The provisional government had been appointed by Khomeini, so Khomeini was likely to go along with the government's request to restore order. On the other hand, Khoeiniha knew that if Khomeini first saw that the occupiers were faithful supporters of him (unlike the leftists in the first occupation) and that large numbers of pious Muslims had gathered outside

31620-548: The preceding Qajar dynasty . Mosaddegh led a general strike, demanding an increased share of the nation's petroleum revenue from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which was operating in Iran. The UK retaliated by reducing the amount of revenue which the Iranian government received. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 helped Iranian royalists depose Mosaddegh in a military coup d'état codenamed Operation Ajax , allowing

31824-638: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian

32028-596: The pressures of the Iraq-Iran war, economic deterioration and regime in-fighting create the potential for major changes inside Iran. The Soviet Union is better positioned than the U.S. to exploit and benefit from any power struggle that results in changes from the Iranian regime [...]. The U.S. should encourage Western allies and friends to help Iran meet its import requirements so as to reduce the attractiveness of Soviet assistance [...]. This includes provision of selected military equipment. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger

32232-410: The real reasons for the invasion of Iran. The United States did not participate in the invasion but it secured Iran's independence after the war ended by applying intense diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union which forced it to withdraw from Iran in 1946 . By the 1950s, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was engaged in a power struggle with Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh , an immediate descendant of

32436-588: The region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire , preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in

32640-602: The reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez ; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi ; meaning mixed language . Dobhashi Bengali

32844-424: The release of all hostages held there. The scandal was compounded when Oliver North destroyed or hid pertinent documents between 21 November and 25 November 1986. During North's trial in 1989, his secretary, Fawn Hall , testified extensively about helping North alter and shred official US National Security Council (NSC) documents from the White House. According to The New York Times , enough documents were put into

33048-439: The revolution and was suspected of playing a role in the embassy crisis. Fidel Castro reportedly praised Khomeini as a revolutionary anti-imperialist who could find common cause between revolutionary leftists and anti-American Islamists. Both expressed disdain for modern capitalism and a preference for authoritarian collectivism. Cuba and its socialist ally Venezuela, under Hugo Chávez , would later form ALBA in alliance with

33252-505: The sale of arms meet high-level approval from the US government, and, when McFarlane convinced them that the US government approved the sale, Israel obliged by agreeing to sell the arms. In 1985, President Reagan entered Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for colon cancer surgery. Reagan's recovery was nothing short of miserable, as the 74-year-old President admitted having little sleep for days in addition to his immense physical discomfort. While doctors seemed to be confident that

33456-416: The same time, the Soviet Bloc also engaged in arms deals with ideologically opponent buyers, possibly involving some of the same players as the Iran–Contra affair. In 1986, a complex operation involving East Germany 's Stasi and the Danish-registered ship Pia Vesta ultimately aimed to sell Soviet arms and military vehicles to South Africa's Armscor , using various intermediaries to distance themselves from

33660-405: The same time, the arms embargo opened the door for Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence as the Kremlin could sell Iran weapons if the U.S. would not. The conclusion was that the U.S. should start selling Iran arms as soon as it was politically possible. This was made more difficult politically due to Ayatollah Khomeini 's openly declared goal of exporting his Islamic revolution all over

33864-401: The second delivery, Reverend Benjamin Weir was released by his captors, the Islamic Jihad Organization . On 24 November 1985, 18 Hawk antiaircraft missiles were delivered. Robert McFarlane resigned on 4 December 1985, stating that he wanted to spend more time with his family, and was replaced by Admiral John Poindexter . Two days later, Reagan met with his advisors at the White House, where

34068-412: The second time, he was beaten and kept alone in a freezing cell for two weeks. Another hostage, U.S. Army medic Donald Hohman, went on a hunger strike for several weeks, and two hostages attempted suicide . Steve Lauterbach broke a water glass and slashed his wrists after being locked in a dark basement room with his hands tightly bound. He was found and rushed to the hospital by guards. Jerry Miele,

34272-571: The shah to extend his power. For the next two decades the shah reigned as an absolute monarch . "Disloyal" elements within the state were purged. The U.S. continued to support the shah after the coup, with the CIA training the Iranian secret police . In the subsequent decades of the Cold War , various economic, cultural, and political issues united Iranian opposition against the shah and led to his eventual overthrow. In recent decades, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly said that US hostilities toward Iran date back to

34476-554: The site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo , was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi . The Persian language influenced

34680-410: The spokeswoman for the Iranian students during the crisis, said that those who rejected Asgharzadeh's plan did not participate in the subsequent events. The students observed the procedures of the Marine Security Guards from nearby rooftops overlooking the embassy. They also drew on their experiences from the recent revolution, during which the U.S. Embassy grounds were briefly occupied. They enlisted

34884-452: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses

35088-458: The standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility . Nevertheless,

35292-400: The students planned a symbolic occupation, in which they would release statements to the press and leave when government security forces came to restore order. This was reflected in placards saying: "Don't be afraid. We just want to sit in." When the embassy guards brandished firearms, the protesters retreated, with one telling the Americans, "We don't mean any harm." But as it became clear that

35496-406: The support of police officers in charge of guarding the embassy and of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards . According to the group and other sources, Ayatollah Khomeini did not know of the plan beforehand. The students had wanted to inform him, but according to the author Mark Bowden , Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha persuaded them not to do so. Khoeiniha feared that the government would use

35700-434: The surgery was successful, the discovery of his localized cancer was a daunting realization for Reagan. From seeing the recovery process of other patients, as well as medical “experts” on television predicting his death to be soon, Reagan's typical optimistic outlook was dampened. These factors were bound to contribute to psychological distress in the midst of an already distressing situation. Additionally, Reagan's invocation of

35904-432: The surgery. The meeting took place five days after the surgery and only three days after doctors gave the news that his polyp had been malignant. The three participants of this meeting had very different recollections of what was discussed during its 23-minute duration. Months later, Reagan even stated that he "had no recollection of a meeting in the hospital in July with McFarlane and that he had no notes which would show such

36108-535: The takeover claimed that in 1953, the American Embassy had been used as a "den of spies" from which the coup was organized. Later, documents which suggested that some of the members of the embassy's staff had been working with the Central Intelligence Agency were found inside the embassy. Afterwards, the CIA confirmed its role and that of MI6 in Operation Ajax . After the Shah entered the United States, Ayatollah Khomeini called for street demonstrations. Revolutionary teams displayed secret documents purportedly taken from

36312-409: The takeover. According to Foreign Minister Yazdi, when he went to Qom to tell Khomeini about it, Khomeini told him to "go and kick them out." But later that evening, back in Tehran, Yazdi heard on the radio that Khomeini had issued a statement supporting the seizure, calling it "the second revolution" and the embassy an " American spy den in Tehran ." The Marines and embassy staff were blindfolded by

36516-418: The takers took the cue from the failed rescue mission, the detainees were scattered around Iran in order to make a single rescue attempt impossible. Three high-level officials – Bruce Laingen , Victor L. Tomseth , and Mike Howland – were at the Foreign Ministry at the time of the takeover. They stayed there for several months, sleeping in the ministry's formal dining room and washing their socks and underwear in

36720-434: The time he took office in 1981, a major goal of the Reagan administration was the overthrow of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua and to support the Contra rebels. The Reagan administration's policy toward Nicaragua produced a major clash between the executive and legislative branches as Congress sought to limit, if not curb altogether, the ability of the White House to support the Contras. Direct U.S. funding of

36924-411: The transaction between representatives of Israel and representatives of Iran were taken and made available to the forces in Central America, which are opposing the Sandinista government there. – U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese , White House news conference on November 25, 1986 During the trial, North testified that on 21, 22 or 24 November, he witnessed Poindexter destroy what may have been

37128-539: The two countries. During the Second World War , the British and the Soviet governments invaded and occupied Iran , forcing the first Pahlavi monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi , to abdicate in favor of his eldest son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi . The two nations claimed that they acted preemptively in order to stop Reza Shah from aligning his petroleum-rich country with Nazi Germany . However, the shah's declaration of neutrality, and his refusal to allow Iranian territory to be used to train or supply Soviet troops , were probably

37332-422: The use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi ( Pārsik in Middle Persian ), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian . In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in

37536-430: Was American sabotage of the revolution, the hostage takers hoped to depose the provisional revolutionary government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan , which they believed was plotting to normalize relations with the U.S. and extinguish Islamic revolutionary order in Iran. The occupation of the embassy on November 4, 1979, was also intended as leverage to demand the return of the shah to stand trial in Iran in exchange for

37740-416: Was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first poems of

37944-418: Was at least part of the reason the Iran–Contra affair proved so humiliating for the U.S. when the story first broke in November 1986 that the U.S. itself was selling arms to Iran. At the same time that the U.S. government was considering its options on selling arms to Iran, Contra militants based in Honduras were waging a guerrilla war to topple the FSLN revolutionary government of Nicaragua . Almost from

38148-537: Was aware of the operation as well and strongly opposed it, in particular the diversion of funds allotted to the Afghan operation. According to his Middle Eastern experts, the operation was pointless because the moderates in Iran were not in a position to challenge the fundamentalists. However, he was overruled by Clair George. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -⁠shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),

38352-427: Was believed to be seeking a rapprochement with the US; after the transaction, the US would reimburse Israel with the same weapons, while receiving monetary benefits. McFarlane in a memo to Shultz and Weinberger wrote: The short term dimension concerns the seven hostages; the long term dimension involves the establishment of a private dialogue with Iranian officials on the broader relations [...]. They sought specifically

38556-423: Was captured by Nicaraguan authorities after surviving the plane crash, initially alleged in a press conference on Nicaraguan soil that two of his coworkers, Max Gomez and Ramon Medina, worked for the CIA . He later said he did not know whether they did or not. The Iranian government confirmed the Ash-Shiraa story, and, 10 days after the story was first published, President Reagan appeared on national television from

38760-413: Was deeply committed to securing the release of the hostages; it was this compassion that supposedly motivated his support for the arms initiatives. The president requested that the "moderate" Iranians do everything in their capability to free the hostages held by Hezbollah. Reagan always publicly insisted after the scandal broke in late 1986 that the purpose behind the arms-for-hostages trade was to establish

38964-471: Was highly negative, writing on his copy of McFarlane's paper: "This is almost too absurd to comment on [...] like asking Qaddafi to Washington for a cozy chat." Secretary of State George Shultz was also opposed, stating that having designated Iran a State Sponsor of Terrorism in January 1984, how could the US possibly sell arms to Iran? Only the Director of the CIA William J. Casey supported McFarlane's plan to start selling arms to Iran. In early July 1985,

39168-484: Was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal , and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent . Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in

39372-456: Was recovering in the hospital, McFarlane met with him and told him that representatives from Israel had contacted the National Security Agency to pass on confidential information from what Reagan later described as the "moderate" Iranian faction headed by Rafsanjani opposed to the Ayatollah's hardline anti-US policies. The visit from McFarlane in Reagan's hospital room was the first visit from an administration official outside of Donald Regan since

39576-400: Was replaced by Frank Carlucci on 2 December 1986. When the story broke, many legal and constitutional scholars expressed dismay that the NSC, which was supposed to be just an advisory body to assist the President with formulating foreign policy, had "gone operational" by becoming an executive body covertly executing foreign policy on its own. The National Security Act of 1947 , which created

39780-496: Was scheduled for a referendum vote in less than one month. The referendum was successful, and after the vote, both leftists and theocrats continued to use allegations of pro-Americanism to suppress their opponents: relatively moderate political forces that included the Iranian Freedom Movement, the National Front , Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari , and later President Abolhassan Banisadr . In particular, carefully selected diplomatic dispatches and reports discovered at

39984-473: Was seen "not just as a diplomatic affront," but as a "declaration of war on diplomacy itself." Television news gave daily updates. In January 1980, the CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite began ending each show by saying how many days the hostages had been captive. President Carter applied economic and diplomatic pressure: Oil imports from Iran were ended on November 12, 1979, and with Executive Order 12170 , around US$ 8 billion of Iranian assets in

40188-505: Was subject to an arms embargo at the time of the scandal, the sale of arms was deemed illegal . The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras , an anti- Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua . Under the Boland Amendment , further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress , but the Reagan administration figured out a loophole by secretively using non-appropriated funds instead. The administration's justification for

40392-458: Was taken to a hospital after a long delay which was caused by the guards. Other hostages described threats to boil their feet in oil (Alan B. Golacinski), cut their eyes out (Rick Kupke), or kidnap and kill a disabled son in America and "start sending pieces of him to your wife" (David Roeder). Four hostages tried to escape, and all of them were punished with stretches of solitary confinement when their escape attempts were discovered. Queen,

40596-488: Was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas . Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans ( Rumelia ), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa , in

40800-402: Was the Teymur Bakhtiar mansion in Tehran, where the hostages were finally given tubs, showers, and hot and cold running water. Several foreign diplomats and ambassadors – including the former Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor – visited the hostages over the course of the crisis and relayed information back to the U.S. government, including dispatches from Laingen. Iranian propaganda stated that

41004-423: Was the main reason for selling arms to Iran. The following arms were supplied to Iran: The first arms sales to Iran began in 1981, though the official paper trail has them beginning in 1985 (see above). On 20 August 1985, Israel sent 96 US-made TOW missiles to Iran through an arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar . Subsequently, on 14 September 1985, 408 more TOW missiles were delivered. On 15 September 1985, following

41208-548: Was to appeal for the release of the hostages on humanitarian grounds and to share his hopes for a strategic anti-communist alliance with the Ayatollah. As some of the student leaders had hoped, Iran's moderate prime minister, Bazargan, and his cabinet resigned under pressure just days after the takeover. The duration of the hostages' captivity has also been attributed to internal Iranian revolutionary politics. As Ayatollah Khomeini told Iran's president: This has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put

41412-425: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راه‌آهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in

41616-417: Was widely seen as an act against the U.S. and its influence in Iran, including its perceived attempts to undermine the Iranian Revolution and its long-standing support of the Shah of Iran , Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , who was overthrown in 1979. After Pahlavi was overthrown, he was granted asylum and admitted to the U.S. for cancer treatment. The new Iranian regime demanded his return in order to stand trial for

#609390