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444 Days: Looking Back At The U.S.-Iran Hostage Crisis

Forty years ago, on November 4, 1979, student followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took dozens of American hostages. The attack sparked a diplomatic crisis that reverberates through the region to this day.

Amid Iran's Islamic Revolution, students supported by large, angry crowds took control of the U.S. compound. They said they were outraged that the country's former leader, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had been admitted to the United States for cancer treatment.

It would be 444 days before 52 American hostages were freed. The diplomatic standoff inflicted grave damage to the presidency of Jimmy Carter, and U.S.-Iranian relations have never recovered.

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