After Iranians overthrow the U.S.-backed shah, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini returns from exile and seizes command of the newly established
Islamic Republic of Iran. In November, militants storm the U.S. embassy
in Tehran and proceed to hold 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. During
that time span, the Jimmy Carter administration froze Iranian assets,
severed diplomatic ties and banned American exports to the country.
A secret attempt to rescue the hostages in 1980, dubbed “Operation Eagle
Claw,” resulted in failure and the deaths of eight American servicemen.
After extensive diplomatic mediation, the U.S. embassy hostages were
released on Jan. 20, 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan took the oath of
office.
The U.S. takes the side of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, a
bloody, eight-year conflict that resulted in the deaths of around 1.5
million people. In the longest conventional war of the 20th century, the
two countries fired missiles at each other's cities, Iran sent waves of
youngsters to death on the front lines, and Iraqi warplanes bombed
Iranian schools and even a jetliner unloading passengers at an Iranian
airport.
Hussein had turned to the U.S., France and Britain for weapons, which
those countries sold him to prevent an outright Iranian victory. An
estimated 5,000 Kurds died in a chemical weapons attack launched by
Hussein in the town of Halabja in March 1988. The United States
suggested at the time that the Iranians may have been responsible.The
Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group is blamed for the bombings of
the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon and attacks on the U.S. Marine Corps in
Beirut, which left a combined 258 Americans dead. In April, a suicide
bomber crashed a truck into the U.S. Embassy there, detonating around
2,000 pounds of explosives and killing 17 Americans – some of which were
CIA officers – in the process.
In October, 241 U.S. military personnel were killed when suicide bombers
detonated two trucks of explosives at military barracks in Lebanon in
the first major terrorist attack against the U.S. The attack was the
deadliest day for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo
Jima in World War II and produced the highest death toll for the U.S.
military since the first day of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War.
The Reagan administration designates the Islamic Republic as being a
state sponsor of terrorism. Decades later, the U.S. State Department –
in its Country Reports on Terrorism 2018 – said Iran is still the
“world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.” The Tehran regime has spent
nearly $1 billion per year to support terror groups "that serve as its
proxies and expand its malign influence across the globe," the State
Department said. Those groups include Hezbollah, Hamas and the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The cruiser USS Vincennes, operating in the Persian Gulf following naval
activity there between the two countries, mistakes Iran Air Flight 655
as being an Iranian F-14 fighter jet and shoots it out of the sky. The
U.S. says the Navy made 11 radio warning calls on different frequencies
before the Vincennes fired two missiles at the airplane, bringing it
down and killing all 290 aboard.
