ABSTRACT
The Iranian hostage crisis was but one event in a long history of U.S. involvement in Iran dating back to the 1950s when the Central Intelligence Agency worked to remove nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq from power, thus leading the way for the Shah to become Iran’s leader and form a long diplomatic and economic relationship with Washington. Iran became the center of American influence in the Middle East and a key provider of oil for the U.S. economy.2 However, U.S. ties with Iran were for many nationalists, intellectuals and radical Islamists another example of imperialism and oil-based foreign policy that had to be removed from the Middle East. With Khomeini and other radical clerics in power and the deeply anti-American regime immensely popular with many in the country, Iran set about using its oil wealth and growing ties to radical groups in the region to attack U.S. interests. In 1983 the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which was funded by Iran, attacked the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines. In 1996 the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. military housing complex, was bombed, killing scores of Americans. A U.S. court, relying on intelligence gathering from numerous agencies of the government, stated that the Ayatollah Khomeini had approved the bombing.
