This is a non-fiction account of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. The author delves deep into the complexities of the situation, offering a detailed narrative of (1) motivations, (2) participants and (3) attempts to solve the crisis by various means, including military. I’m curious how would have Americans reacted if this happened now, bearing in mind the recent fallout of October 7th atrocities committed by HAMAS in Israel. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for December 2023 at  Non Fiction Book Club group.

The book starts with Iranian students planning to capture the US embassy to show to the whole world that perfidious den of spies. As is repeated multiple times during the book, they were sure that the embassy is just a cover to CIA operations, all (!) embassy workers are CIA spies and their main goal was an assassination of Khomeini. And while there (as is ‘normal’ for any embassy, not only US one) were representatives of intelligence agencies, their work is much more mundane than Bond movies.

One of such was a political officer Michael Metrinko. His surname is Ukrainian, which picked my interest (the book value mentions “he thickening features of his Pennsylvania Slav ancestry” and yes, he is a US citizen born and bred). During the captivity he was maybe the most isolated of the captives because the document haven’t been successfully destroyed and it has been known that he is CIA. The man had an interesting life, as one of his earlier adventures showed.

The book follows a score of 52 captives in a great detail, including their interrogations, their daily lives and attitudes toward captors. This is a great study of how people react on such adverse conditions, from finding God to telling the captors everything he knew about his colleagues.

There is some info how the US presidential elections of 1980 were affected by the crisis. The author definitely sides with then-president Carter against other candidates, from Kennedy, who shot himself in the leg by siding with Iran demands to the ultimate winner Reagan, whose familiar chiseled features recalled an era of seemingly limitless American potential, skillfully played off Carter’s powerlessness. The Gipper’s broad-shouldered, cinematic swagger alone was anodyne to Carter’s “malaise.” America had received enough doses of bitter medicine from the peanut-farmer president and was eager to sail off into a dreamworld of patriotic bliss. Reagan deliberately dithered when pressed for specifics, but his well-articulated dreams were rooted in the country’s fondest fantasy of itself Arriving in a blizzard of brilliant red, white, and blue, the Republican convention was a restorative to the country’s sagging spirits, and it gave Reagan a big enough boost to overtake the president in most polls.

Another important lesson from the debacle is that quite often chance plays a much greater role than thoughtful calculations of possible moves: from the fact that Khomeini initially told his interior minister to throw back students and stop the whole mess, just a day before he turned 180 degrees and praised them; to the attempt of armed intervention to rescue the captives, which was meticulously planned but stopped with loss of life and material even before they met Iranian forces!

Finally, it helped me to see a greater picture: that during the 444-day detention of embassy personnel the USSR invaded Afghanistan and the Iraqi-Iranian war has begun – I knew about both but never linked them to this crisis. Overall, it is a thought-provoking and well-researched account.

Bowden's another one of those authors I'll pick up regardless of what the book's about. He tells a compelling, if mostly one-sided tale here, but it feels like that's more from access problems than bias. Killing Pablo and Black Hawk Down are better books, but this one's worth looking at.

Where-it-all-began origin stories about watershed moments in history are always poignant. “Guests of the Ayatollah,” even two decades after it was first published, is a perfect example.

Two generations of Americans don’t have first-hand memory of the event that launched militant Islam and turned Iran — once a strategic U.S. ally — into an international pariah. So much of our geo-political landscape was shaped by the U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran in 1979. Author/journalist Mark Bowden, whose books always go into astonishing detail, made certain to agonizingly chronicle the lives of the 52 hostages after they were seized by a motley group of zealous but disorganized Iranian students. Using personal journals and copious interviews — including with some of the hostage-takers themselves — Bowden unpacks what surely ranks as the definitive history of the crisis and its aftermath.

I picked up this book after the death of former President Jimmy Carter because I wanted to refresh my memory about the events that arguably cost him a second term. Carter here comes off as determined to bring the Americans home but hamstrung (Reluctant? Indecisive?) by his diplomatic and military options. His term was defined by the failure of an impossibly difficult rescue mission, which ended in the fiery deaths of eight U.S. soldiers at a remote desert muster point. It was a low point for the U.S. military — and one that would linger through more disasters in coming years. Bowden thoroughly reports on the decision-making leading up to the raid and details the debacle that unfolded at Desert One. It is the most heart-pounding section of the book.

The hostages came home on the day Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated in 1981. Contrary to the mythology, that success was Carter’s alone, Bowden writes. From his interviews, it was clear that the hostage takers held out until Carter was out of office only to inflict more embarrassment on him.

In the following years, Iran would fight a devastating war with its neighbor Iraq and become a hotbed for radical Islam. It would cozy up to Russia and become linked to terror groups like Hezbollah. The destabilization across the region is still felt today. In short, Iran is a bad actor on the world stage. And it all began when a group of students broke down the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

My interest in the Iranian Hostage Crisis mainly arose after watching the movie Argo, leading me to dive a little deeper into the causes and ramifications of the event. Overall I thought this was a really well-researched and interesting look into the events leading up to it and the days of the captives. There are many first-hand accounts from hostages as well as follow-up interviews with the hostage takers years later, not to mention the account of family members who literally flew to Tehran and successfully demanded to visit their loved ones. I would also say this is really unbiased politically on the American front and does a good job of stating the different reactions from people in power and how it shaped Reagan winning the presidential election. It doesn't go into the storyline of Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History other than briefly mentioning those who escaped at the beginning of the book (even though Argo was fully declassified in 1997 and this book was published a decade later in 2007) so I do think that's a great follow up story to this one.

I’ve been eyeing this one for years and am super glad I finally got around to it. It was fascinating. Super well-written and gripping, full of details. A little longer than I wanted, and I would have loved more on the “Argo” mission to liberate the Canadian embassy six, but altogether this was a delightful and stimulating experience.

Guests of the Ayatollah is about the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis in which Iranian university students took over the US Embassy in Tehran and held 66 Americans hostage for over a year.

The embassy takeover and subsequent hostage crisis was, in many ways, a continuation of the Iranian Revolution that had taken place the year before and dethroned Iran’s decades-long dictator, Shah Pahlavi.

There were many motives for the embassy takeover, but the most visible motive was the desire to safeguard the recent revolution. In 1953, the CIA had helped to depose Iran’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Mossadeq. The memory of this event, as well as evidence of US (and CIA) excesses in other parts of the world made Iranians fearful (and a bit paranoid) that the US would intervene again into Iranian politics. By holding white-collar employees hostage, the students aimed to protect Iranian sovereignty and the drastic political reorganization of the revolution.

However, as Bowden emphasizes, there were many other motives to the takeover. Some politicians and clerics had purely political motives and used the takeover as a means to increase their own power. Others (mostly students) were motivated by the heady dream that the takeover would spark a worldwide revolt to emancipate the third world from the bipolar grip of the Godless Soviets and the meddlesome Americans.

Led by students from across the political spectrum, the embassy takeover was a wildly popular David-versus-Goliath story for many Iranians. For the American public, it was a frustrating story of ordinary government workers caught in the middle of a turbulent, confused, developing nation: the most powerful nation on earth was left powerless. Both these story lines persist today.

What's more the takeover had big and immediate reverberations. In Iran, the takeover helped bring religious conservatives to power and establish a type of government that Bowden cynically terms a “mullocracy”—one part democracy and one part repressive theocracy. In America, the event hijacked Carter’s presidency and helped sweep him out of office. In the region, the takeover prompted Saddam Hussein to declare war on Iran, as he tried to take advantage of Iran’s new pariah status. And to this day, the hostage crisis looms large in the US and Iranian memories. We will extend a hand if you will unclench your fist.

But for such a big event, the actual details of the day-to-day captivity are a bit mundane. Bowden is also the author of Black Hawk Down, and while he tries to bring a Fox Search Light pace to the book, this is tough to accomplish as a 400+ day hostage crisis does not lend itself to an action packed read.

What I found most interesting about this book were the larger themes that Bowden describes--the domestic and foreign policy issues underlying the embassy takeover. The idea that the Iranian revolution and the embassy takeover were watershed moments for Iran, the world, and Islam. Bowden acknowledges this draw early in the book writing, “For a student of politics, being in Tehran just then was like being a geologist camped on the rim of an active volcano” (22). I read this book because I wanted a spot on this rim.

At times, Bowden does a good job of capturing this context--of looking into the volcano. But Bowden spends too much time detailing the day-to-day lives of the hostages. Their exercise regiments, limited clothing choices, and diets. Meh. Also, in describing the lives of the hostages, Bowden assumes a vantage point that is hokey and reads as too Team American (“I guess we’re going to have to go show this ayatollah you don’t mess with Arkansas boys” (451)). And the book is occasionally dismissive of Iranian sentiments: Bowden describes the protesters outside of the embassy as a “mindless, insatiable, million-throated monster, screaming for American blood” (64) and makes vague references to the lurking "Islamist threat".

These shortcomings becomes especially apparent in the book’s epilogue where Bowden tries to ideologically refute the motives of the hostage takers. To me this seemed like a waste of energy: few would disagree that the embassy takeover was illegal and that it had lasting negative effects for both Iran and the US. Yet Bowden concerns himself too much with refuting the hostage takers motives rather than in describing the more interesting messy world from which these motives arose. Bowden argues a point that is dramatically less important and less interesting than most of the other issues.

But there are many redeeming qualities to this book. For one, Bowden fills the book with interesting facts that were new to me. Bowden describes a few escape attempts by hostages and gives exciting detail to the failed rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw. Bowden also succeeds in depicting Carter as a patient, aggressive (and at times even hawkish) leader--not as the overly-dovish push-over he is often labeled today. And Bowden describes the US media frenzy and the feedback effect they had on the revolution. One final interesting fact that Bowden provides is that in the waning days of the hostage crisis, Ronald Reagan’s advisers reached out to Iranian officials to try to delay the release of the hostages in order to hurt Carter’s election chances. According to Bowden, it didn’t have any real effects on the election, but it's a hell of a fun fact.

But I'm getting lost in the muck. The takeaway point is that with too great a focus on the day-to-day monotony of prisoner life, too great a focus on the Apple-Pie vantage point of the prisoners, some none-too-clever chapter titles (they're just quotes and bad ones at that!), and some disappointing scholarship towards the end of the book (which reads as neo-con paranoia of the "Islamist Threat"), Bowden weakens what is otherwise a highly readable, smart history of sitting on the rim of a volcanic world. He chooses to count the rocks at the crater's edge rather than look down on the bubbling lava. Ah well.

2.5

A very objective and effective weaving of many different perspectives during the Iranian hostage crisis which has since been staining everyday life in Iran by causing the rise of an absurd religious autocracy. It's hard to venerate this particular theocracy as being "better than the Shah's regime". The overthrown Shah may have been a tyrannical nutjob who purged/executed those who would utter a single syllable of dissidence against him, but at least the rule he imposed was secular.

Bowden, however, refrains from taking a biased stance for anybody here. He acknowledges the grievances that Iran had towards the United States and understood what fed their indignation for the "Great Satan". For most of the book, it would appear that he's writing a massive volume on behalf of the Iranian students who seized the embassy, taking into mind the somewhat fair and humane treatment the hostages were getting.

That being said, he makes it all the more obvious on how ridiculous the Iranian national festering obsession for the "triumph" is towards the end. Hell, these whackos even go so far to open up an anti-American museum where the former embassy once stood. The people living under this oppressive Islamic dictatorship are yearning to be free and only time will tell if a second revolution will put their country on the democratic map.

This book was amazing. I cannot believe that I read over 700 pages of exhaustively researched material on a single event (the Iranian hostage crisis in the late 1970's) and stayed riveted the entire time. I was worried after reading Black Hawk Down by the same author that I would have the same trouble of keeping people/events straight, but I didn't at all - Bowden kept the characters alive, distinct, and memorable.

The book covers as many angles as possible - it tries to tell what it was like for the hostages, and also for the Carter administration as they tried repeatedly to resolve the crisis. I knew the bare bones of the story (how long they were kept, whether the ending was happy/sad), but I was still on the edge of my seat for the entire book. It was suspenseful, and detailed, and really, really captivating. Highly recommended non-fiction reading.

The book recounts the Iranian hostage crisis which took place after the 79’ revolution. The author makes a good job explaining the crisis and the build ups of the situation for anyone who is new to it.

What I didn’t like about the book is the tone of the author. I obviously don’t agree with what the students and the Iranian government did at the time but I still didn’t like the way he spoke about and portrayed the Iranians. Describing Iranians as barbarians for instance is so rich coming from an “American” given his country’s bloody history in their homeland and the entire MENA region.

Mark Bowden examines the Iranian Hostage Crisis of November 1979 until the January 20th, 1981 release of the hostages. The fraught nature of the hostage situation during the Iranian Revolution and the lack of central authority. No plan to evacuate, no clear-cut chain of command in Iran as well as a muddled response to the issue led to 444 days of turmoil.

A fascinating look into the hostage crisis. I was graduating from HS and entering college at the time and remember it well. But there were so many details I didn’t know. It’s a long book but worth the commitment.

Once you get passed its doorstop length & kinda ridiculous epilogue, this briskly-written narrative of the Iranian hostage crisis shows off what veteran journalist Bowden does best: The you-are-there storytelling he brought to the American military in Somalia (Black Hawk Down) & the hunt for drug kingpin Pablo Escobar (Killing Pablo). Forget his clumsy attempts to define “Islamofascism.” (It was written in the shadow of 9/11.) He’s best with fly-on-the-wall access to White House frustrations, the rescue fiasco &, his main focus, the day-to-day ordeal of the 52 hostages & his supersized cast.