The 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran may have ended after 444 days, but both America and Iran still remain captive to a crisis that began 40 years ago.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's supreme leader said Sunday that his country has outmaneuvered the United States in the four decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In part 1 of this four-part series, AP reporters recall the shah’s ouster that helped foment the Islamic Revolution.
In part 2 of this four-part series, AP reporters recall Ruhollah Khomeini’s dramatic return back to Iran following years of exile.
In part 3 of this four-part series, AP reporters recount their nerve-wracking expulsion from Iran after revolution upended the country.
In part 4 of this multi-part series, AP reporters recall the U.S. Embassy takeover that sparked the 444-day hostage crisis that still colors tension now between America and Iran amid its collapsing nuclear deal.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — His revolutionary fervor diminished by the years that have also turned his dark brown hair white, one of the Iranian student leaders of the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover says he...
When journalists ventured out into the streets in Tehran, amid the protests engulfing Iran, they routinely encountered fiery barricades, gun battles and Molotov cocktails. Some reporters had their...
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has unveiled new murals painted on exterior walls of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran ahead of the 40th anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the embassy.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — For those who were there, the memories are still fresh, 40 years after one of the defining events of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, when protesters seized the U.S. Embassy in...
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The U.S. Embassy in Tehran remains frozen in 1979 as the 40th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis approaches, a time capsule of revolutionary graffiti, Underwood typewriters...
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Waving Iranian flags, chanting "Death to America" and burning U.S. and Israeli flags, hundreds of thousands of people poured out onto the streets across Iran on Monday, marking...
EDITOR'S NOTE: On Feb. 11, 1979, after days of running street battles and uncertainty, Iran's military stood down and allowed the Islamic Revolution to sweep across the country.
The caretaker government left behind by the cancer-stricken Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who weeks earlier left the nation, quickly crumbled as the soldiers once backing it embraced the supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Forty years ago, Iran's military said it wouldn't stand in the way of revolutionaries and returned to its barracks, signaling the end of the rule of the shah.
The effects of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, including the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage crisis, have reverberated through decades of tense relations between Iran and America.
Here are the key moments leading up to Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Inspired in part by Iran's Islamic Revolution, a young Egyptian army lieutenant emptied his machine gun into President Anwar Sadat in 1981, killing a leader who made peace with Israel and offered the shah a refuge after his overthrow.
The assassination carried out by Khalid al-Islambouli and others from a Sunni Islamic extremist group showed the power of Iran's Shiite-led revolution across the religious divides of the Muslim world.
PARIS (AP) — Media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said Thursday that Iranian authorities arrested, jailed and sometimes executed 1.7 million people around the capital Tehran alone in the first 30 years after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The organization revealed its count that included regime opponents, Baha'is and other religious minorities and at least 860 journalists.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — They were born after their parents' protests brought down the shah of Iran in 1979, when enthusiasm gave way to the hard years of U.S.-led isolation and a bloody, eight-year war with Iraq.
Iran's "revolution babies" are a major force in the country today, in the wake of the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the creation of the Islamic Republic, now marking its 40th anniversary.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Forty years after he defected from the shah's Imperial Guard to join the Islamic Revolution, Mohammad Reza Tajik, like many Iranians from that time, looks back wistfully at the youthful excitement they felt and the losses they suffered since then.
Working in his woodshop in Tehran, he recounted the deaths of his brother in Iran's 1980s war with Iraq and of a friend last year in Syria's long civil war in which Iran is involved.
EDITOR'S NOTE: On Feb. 1, 1979, Iran's exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini descended from a chartered Air France Boeing 747 to return to Tehran, a moment that changed the country's history for decades to come.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran on Friday began celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah, overturned 2,500 years of monarchical rule and brought hard-line Shiite clerics to power.
The climactic events that year — from revolutionaries in the streets of Tehran to blindfolded American hostages in the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis months later — not only changed Iran's history but also helped shape today's Middle East.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — His image is on bank notes and in school textbooks in Iran, often as a black-and-white embodiment of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that swept aside the country's shah and forever changed the nation.
But unlike other countries ruled by family dynasties, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's children and grandchildren have never fully entered politics.
NEAUPHLE-LE-CHATEAU, France (AP) — From a sleepy village outside Paris, the man who would become the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran sat cross-legged beneath an apple tree, delivering messages daily to hundreds of followers clamoring to glimpse the glowering cleric in the black turban.
Forty years ago, Iran's exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini descended from a chartered Air France Boeing 747 to return to Tehran, a city on the cusp of revolution.
The effects of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, including the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage crisis, have reverberated through decades of tense relations between Iran and America.
Here are the key moments leading up to Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Revolutionaries in the streets give way to black-and-white images of blindfolded American hostages. Two enemies sign a peace deal after years of hostilities. And one of the world's two superpowers invades its southern neighbor, launching a bloody, decade-long conflict.
These moments and others in 1979, which dominated television sets and newspaper front pages 40 years ago, have shaped the modern Middle East.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — At the height of his power in 1971, Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi drew world leaders to a wind-swept luxury tent city, offering a lavish banquet of food flown in from Paris to celebrate 2,500 years of Persian monarchy in the ruins of Persepolis.
Only eight years later, his own empire would be in ruins.
Forty years ago, Iran's ruling shah left his nation for the last time and an Islamic Revolution overthrew the vestiges of his caretaker government.
The effects of the 1979 revolution, including the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage crisis, have reverberated through decades of tense relations between Iran and America.
Here are the key moments leading up to Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis.