Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. Fifty-three Americans were held hostage for 444 days by radical Islamist students and militants. The American hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981. Yet U.S.-Iranian relations have never recovered from the diplomatic crisis triggered 30 years ago.
That’s about to change.
American politicians have been slow to recognize the nature of the seismic shift in Iranian politics, but Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s spell over the Iranian people has broken. In 2009, it is not the CIA’s coup of 1953, but the legacy of Khomeini’s fundamentalist coup of 1979 that is at the heart of the protests for democracy and human rights in Iran.
For 30 years, Iran’s leaders have made anti-Americanism the ideological cornerstone of Islamic fundamentalism. In this revolutionary demonology, the United States was branded as the Iranian people’s mortal enemy — the Great Satan. Anti-Americanism became the glue uniting a broad coalition under the umbrella of Ayatollah Khomeini.
The shah and the United States were blamed for “Westitis” — the Iranian people’s political oppression, economic exploitation and cultural alienation. And Khomeini’s revolutionaries were glorified as Iran’s saviors: the agents of Iran’s liberation from corruption and contamination.
But in 2009, history has shifted. Iranians have no illusions about 1979.
The seizure of the American embassy in Iran served as a pretext for the seizure of the Iranian state and economy by radical Islamists loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini. Under the cover of waging a holy war against the Great Satan, the hostage crisis allowed Khomeini and his allies on the left to stage a constitutional coup. They established a theocracy premised on the negation of democracy. Revolutionary tribunals established in Khomeini’s name proceeded to stifle political and religious dissent by branding their opponents as agents of foreign powers. Thousands were executed in Evin prison after summary trials held in violation of the Iranian constitution and Islamic law. Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari rejected Khomeini’s coup. He was defrocked. Ranking members of Khomeini’s entourage — Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and heir designate Hossein-Ali Montazeri — became the victims of the terror unleashed in the wake of the hostage crisis.
The damage went beyond religion and politics. The Iranian state, military and bureaucracy were gutted. Iran’s professional and educated middle class were marginalized, the Iranian economy crippled and society shattered. Overnight, women and youths, students and scholars, ethnic and religious minorities, particularly the Kurds and the Bahai, became second-class citizens.
The hostage crisis also paved the way for Iran’s diplomatic, political and economic isolation, Saddam’s invasion of Iran, the death of thousands, the displacement of millions and losses estimated at a trillion dollars.
In this sense, the political protests shaking Iran in 2009 show they have shattered the myth of 1979. It is not the Great Satan, but Khomeini’s heir, Iran’s supreme leader, who has sanctified a coup and ordered a military crackdown on the Iranian people.
The death of Neda Agha Soltan has reminded the world that Iranians have been hostages of terror and tyranny since 1979.
For far too long, the threat of sanctions and strikes allowed Iran’s leaders to feed and fuel this anti-American mythology. That false perception has finally collapsed.
The Islamic Republic’s calendar is turning against Iran’s rulers.
Expect Wednesday — the 30th-anniversary celebration of the hostage crisis — to turn into an occasion for more protests. Iranians are not only reclaiming their vote, but also their history, heritage and humanity.
This article originally appeared in Deseret News.
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